f>' 




Class _irK-V3_Li; 

Book All__ 

Cppight W 



CXiBfRIGHT DEPOSIK 



The 

Democratic 

Party 



* 



THE LIBERTY HISTORY COMPANY 

156 FIFTH AVENUE 

NEW YORK CITY 



Price, 60 Cents 



The 

Democratic 

Party 

cyl HISTORY 

By 

WALTER W. SPOONER 



THE LIBERTY HISTORY COMPANY 

156 FIFTH AVENUE 

NEW YORK CITY 

1920 



V 









Copyrighted by 

THE LIBERTY HISTORY COMPANY 

NEW YORK CITY 

1920 



All rights reserved 



'm 3 ' 

©CU576351 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
The Party of the People. 1791-1801 5 

CHAPTER II 
Character and Ability. 1801-1809 . 15 

CHAPTER III 
Evolutionary Phases. 1809-1825 23 

CHAPTER IV 
The Jacksonian Era. 1825-1844 31 

CHAPTER V 

The Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso. 1844-1848 43 

CHAPTER VI 
The Party of the Union. 1849-1857 *. 51 

CHAPTER VII ^ 
The Issues and Election of 1860. 1857-1860 62 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Civil War and Its Outcome. 1860-1865 74 

CHAPTER IX 
Transition and New Questions. 1865-1884 87 

CHAPTER X 
Cleveland and After. 1884-1912 98 

CHAPTER XI 
Wilson. 1912-1920 113 

Literature Recommended for Reading and Reference.. 123 

Electoral and Popular Votes 124 



CHAPTER I 

THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE 

1791-1801 

THE Democratic party has had an uninterrupted exist- 
ence of nearly one hundred and thirty years. 

Founded in 1791 with Thomas Jefferson as its chief spon- 
sor, it attracted immediately the enthusiastic and affection- 
ate support of the masses of the people, who were 
determined that the institutions and government of the 
United States should have the character of a democracy and 
not an aristocratic system based upon the superior presump- 
tions and pretensions of a few. Its development was so 
rapid that at the national elections of 1792 it secured control 
of the popular branch of Congress and cast 55 of the total 
132 Electoral votes for President and Vice-President. In 
1796 it lacked but two votes of the number required to 
decide the result in the Electoral College; and in 1800 it 
won a triumphant victory, electing the President and Vice- 
President and also a marked majority of the mem.bers of each 
house of Congress. Thus established as the ruling power 
of the nation, it was so maintained by the people, nearly 
always by overwhelming majorities, for an unbroken period 
of forty years, when it experienced a temporary reverse 
without, however, any abatement of its vitality or deviation 
from its original principles or character. Those principles 
and that character, distinguishing it as the party of the 
masses of the people in composition, instincts, action, and 
general acceptation, it has since preserved through all the 
vicissitudes of its fortunes. 

Such are the outstanding facts of the origin, rise, and 
position of the Democratic party. Without the addition of 
another word, they might well explain its great part in shap- 
ing the institutions and directing the destinies of the 
country, and its continuance in full vigor and prestige to 
the present day as an affirmative and aggressive force of 
politics and government. On account of its popular nature 
and following it spontaneously rose, flourished, still flour- 

5 



6 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

ishes, and, its adherents on principle firmly believe, will 
continue to flourish so long as the American nation endures. 
In this discussion of the record and claims of the Demo- 
cratic party it is believed the reader will discover no illiberal 
spirit toward other parties, past or present, and especially 
none toward its successive great competitors, the Federalist, 
National Republican, Whig, and Republican parties. It is 
no derogation from any of these parties to say that without 
exception they had their beginnings in certain proposals of 
specific policy more or less circumscribed in capabilities of 
popular appeal, and either attended or in time reinforced 
by pronounced class tendencies with reciprocal class pre- 
dominance in their control. The essential virtues of the 
Democratic party are that it sprang from no extemporiza- 
^tion of particular policies, but from the elemental and 
V embracing conception of the equal rights of all ; that this 
has uniformly been its cardinal doctrine; and that its 
course respecting public conditions and questions has char- 
acteristically been so independent of class control or favor 
as to render the party peculiarly unattractive to selfish 
special interests, as well as to those individuals who incline 
to the ancient theory of government as the rightful pos- 
session of " the rich, the well-born, and the able " — that is 
to say, the rich and well-born, with whom the able, accord- 
ing to that theory, are necessarily identified. 

" The rich, the well-born, and the able." These were 
words used by John Adams (Works, Boston ed., 1851, IV, 
290) in designating the proper sorts of people to be en- 
trusted with the responsible powers of government. It was 
1 in complete harmony with their spirit that the Federalist 

party was established and always conducted. This organi- 
zation was the first, and, for a time, th€ only national party 
of the United States. As indicated by its name, it claimed 
to be the embodiment of the forces that had fought so stren- 
uously, and, in the end, successfully, for the replacement of 
the old feeble Confederation of the States by a Federal 
government with a coordinated and solid system of central 
administration headed by a national executive, the Presi- 



THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE 7 

dent. But the original Federalists of the Constitutional 
convention of 1787 comprised diverse elements representing 
conflicting principles of political thought, opposed views 
concerning the practical details of the national institutions 
to be created, and varying local interests and preferences. 
Of these diverse elements, some were extremely conserva- 
tive, almost monarchical, in their opinions and proposals; 
others were of differing degrees of liberalism, tending, in 
the main, to the idea of decided reservations of rights to the 
States and the people at large. The contest resulted in a 
variety of compromises; without them the Constitution 
could neither have been adopted by the convention nor rati- 
fied by the required number of States. The more liberal 
elements of the convention succeeded in impressing their 
ideas upon the Cons.titution ; and the tendency of that 
instrument toward thoroughly satisfying popular desires 
was emphasized by the prompt addition to it of the first ten 
amendments, collectively known as the " national bill of 
rights." 

After the ratification of the Constitution, accomplished 
in the summer of 1788 by the votes of all the States except 
North Carolina and Rhode Island (both of which ratified 
later), the differences of opinion that had marked the 
struggle were quickly composed, and even those who had 
actively opposed the Constitution, known as anti-Federal- 
ists, became its loyal supporters. The anti-Federalists 
never constituted a formal party, but were a potent factor 
in their brief day. Patriotically accepting the issue of the 
contest, they merged into the unanimous constituency that 
elected Washington to the Presidency in the early part of 
1789 and that stood ready to participate, to the fullest extent 
permitted by the institutions of the time, in political action 
for the welfare of the united country and the happiness of 
its inhabitants. 

It was natural that those who had been positively con- 
cerned in framing the Constitution and securing its adoption 
should assume the responsibility of launching and adminis- 
tering the national governmeint, and become the dominant 



8 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

force in the resulting party development. Washington de- 
sired to avoid all party associations and favor, and accord- 
ingly chose as his chief advisers two men of diametrically 
opposed views— Thomas Jefferson, whom he appointed 
Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton, who was given 
the post of Secretary of the Treasury. But the Federalist 
political organization, in entering upon its career as the 
party of the government, adjusted itself automatically and 
immovably to ideas that repelled not only the great body of 
the former anti-Federalists, but also many of the sincerest 
and ablest of the original Federalists of the formative con- 
stitutional period — including James Madison, who had 
exerted the unquestioned predominating influence in con- 
structing the Constitution. 

These distasteful ideas upon which the Federalist party 
laid its foundations centered in the belief that a controlling 
aristocratic element was inseparable from any effective and 
stable scheme of government. The founders and leaders of 
that party, while agreed upon the general conception of a 
republic as the only possible system for the American com- 
monwealtlf, favored a strictly aristocratic republic — one 
conducted by *' the most important people." They desired 
and expected the Executive administration, the Senate, and 
the judiciary to be invariably constituted from the more 
" select '' classes, and thus together to present an impreg- 
nable front to all attempted intrusions by the masses into 
the sphere of government proper. Admitting to the full, 
however, the justice, and, indeed, the need of a certain 
popular balance as a check upon possible despotism and as 
a general preservative of active liberty, they conceded the 
lower house of Congress to the public at large. It was 
their firm understanding and express contention that a for- 
mally selective — amounting to an aristocratic — character 
for the Executive, Senate, and judiciary was wholly in- 
tended, and practically in terms prescribed, by the constitu- 
tional provisions which kept the choice of those branches 
remote from popular action ; while they held that the con- 
trariety of the arrangement for electing the House of 



THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE 9 

Representatives only accentuated the fundamental nature 
of the Federal institutions as aristocratic in all potent 
respects but with a *' democratical mixture " for necessary 
dilution. 

The reader will observe that the Federalist party's pro- 
posed application of the American governmental system 
was an approximation to the underlying plan of the British 
constitution — notably in the particular of a rigid exclusion 
of the ordinary people from association with the more digni- 
fied and authoritative stations of power. 

Alexander Hamilton, undoubtedly the strongest intellec- 
tual force of the Federalist organization, and also the most 
masterful personality in formulating and directing its basic 
principles and early policies, was deeply enamored of the 
British system, and regarded democracy as an unmixed 
evil. As a member of the Constitutional convention he 
submitted a plan of government which proposed life tenure 
of office (subject to good behavior) for the President and 
Senators, appointment of the Governors of the States by 
the national administration, and an absolute veto power for 
each Governor. He was troubled by the thought that in- 
herently the Constitution and government were too weak. 
After the downfall of the Federalist party he wrote (1802) : 
" I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric 
(the Constitution). . Every day proves to me more 

and more that this American world was not made for me." 
Horrified^at the excesses of the French Revolution, he 
apprehended their repetition in America by the triumphant 
democracy. In one of his last letters (July 10, 1804) he 
referred to democracy as '* our real disease " — the manifes- 
tation of a virulent poison. 

John Adams, another of the preeminent Federalist 
fathers, maintained that democracy should be admitted to 
participation in affairs only with great caution and severe 
constriction. An erudite scholar, he reinforced his argu- 
ments by an elaborate array of historic precedents and de- 
ductions, demonstrating that pure democracy had ever been 
incapable of becoming the foundation or inspiration of a 



lo THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

powerful state. Descanting upon this theme in one of his 
ablest political treatises (^* A Defence of the Con- 
stitutions of the Government of the United States of 
America '')> he says: "It is no wonder then that democ- 
racies and democratical mixtures are annihilated all over 
(the continent of) Europe, except on a barren rock, a paltry 
fen, an inaccessible mountain, or an impenetrable forest." 
Yet he considered it creditable and beneficial to England and 
America that they received and utilized democracy as a 
'' mixture." This expressed the limit of Adams's condescen- 
sion to democracy. 

It expressed moreover the limit of the Federalist party's 
condescension. Condescension is the proper word; for in 
spirit the course of concession to democracy was purely 
expedient and never marked by tolerant recognition. The 
natural right of a few favorites of fortune, and their satel- 
lites, to be the controlling persons, was the supreme idea of 
all true Federalist partisans. Distrust and scorn of the 
masses of the people, in their political capacity, as '' the vul- 
gar," " the rabble," *' the mob," and — most abhorrent name 
of all — *' the democracy," were instinctive to the Federalist 
nature. To '* curb the unruly democracy " was esteemed 
by the Federalists a primary necessity of sound and orderly 
government. 

But the material out of which the American state was to 
be fashioned for the satisfaction and power of the superior 
classes as presumed by the Federalists, was exceedingly 
ill adapted to that undertaking. Traditions and precedents 
of government were quite incapable of practically interest- 
ing the populace or its many brilliant leaders, except as 
they were considered good or bad from previous actual ex- 
perience in America itself. Aristocratic administration 
under the crown of England by royal Governors and Coun- 
cils, with the merely nominal limitation of republican 
Legislative Assemblies, had been the uniform system in the 
colonies, and had produced nothing but grievances, which 
finally became so many and extreme that the whole Ameri- 
can people revolted, fought a successful war against its 



THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE 



II 



masters, and established liberty upon the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence. The improvisation of a na- 
tional government so regulated in practice as to reproduce 
and perpetuate the most objectionable feature of the old 
discarded institutions, did not and could not appeal to 
general public sentiment. 

It was also considered that while the plan of the British 
constitution was an admirable one for England, the argu- 
ments for its automatic imitation by the United States were 
not convincing. The measurable development of British 
liberty had been the tedious and difficult process of centuries, 
continually hampered by king, nobles, and that formidable 
number of the underlings and adorers of the great who ex- 
hibited the strange tendency, common to kindred spirits in 
all countries (not excepting the America of 1790 or 1920), 
of being more royal than the king and more aristocratic 
than the aristocrats. But American national institutions 
were merely in formation — they were not under the com- 
pulsion of ages of custom and constraint as to their charac- 
ter either presently or potentially. Was it desirable to 
have them rooted in^the principle of slow and painful pro- 
gression to larger popular rights after strenuous contests 
to wrest from a hostile central government one " privilege " 
after another? That was the question when Jefferson 
founded the Democratic party in 1791. 

During the entire period of the developments culminating 
in the organization of the government under Washington's 
Presidency — in fact, ever since 1784, — Jefferson had been 
absent from the country as minister to France. His ob- 
servations and reflections derived from his contact with 
the tyrannical French monarchy and his constant personal 
investigations concerning the appalling distresses of its 
oppressed subjects, had intensified his hatred of all arbi- 
trary rule and his passionate devotion to every principle 
and method of government calculated to be of advantage 
to the ordinary people. In letters written to friends he re- 
marked that the people of France were " ground to powder 
by the vices of the form of government " ; that such a gov- 



12 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

ernment was one *^ of wolves over sheep, or kites over 
pigeons"; that the exalted persons who administered it 
were of the most astonishing vulgarity and incapacity; 
that the destiny of nineteen-twentieths of the people was 
utterly hopeless, etc., etc. He was in Paris throughout the 
prodigious events that ushered in the French Revolution, 
including the fall of the Bastille. Returning to the United 
States in the fall of 1789, he was called by Washington to 
become the head of the cabinet, and in the spring of the fol- 
lowing year he entered upon his new office. 

Differences between Jefferson and Hamilton on account 
of the aggressive policies of the latter, all of which tended 
toward rigorous consolidation of the powers of the general 
government and amplification of its pretensions, led soon 
to a complete rupture. Both of those great statesmen, 
however, were far less concerned about immediate than 
permanent matters; and Jefferson was too powerful an 
intellectual leader, as well as too wise a politician, to con- 
sume any energy or time in the small diversions of factious 
opposition. He knew that the popular forces of resistance 
to the spirit and designs of the Federalist party stood ready, 
and, indeed, were impatient, to be moulded into an affirma- 
tive and compact political entity. There was no ceremony, 
there were practically no preliminaries, in the formation of 
the Democratic party. It sprang into being around the 
personality of Jefferson, on the aggressive and unalter- 
able proposition that the government, in all its composi- 
tion, scope, and business, was most certainly to be subject 
to the direct concern, scrutiny, approbation, and participa- 
tion of the American people without distinction of class or 
calculation of favor. It was one of Jefferson's most char- 
acteristic traits that he was unimpressed by superficial per- 
sonal fortune, and to him in thri respect the Democratic 
party conformed its whole character and texture, refusing 
utterly to accept pretensions of superior political right, with 
the sufficient and sole explanation that it did not want to 
and did not have to. 

At its beginning the new organization took the title of 



THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE 13 

*' The Democratic and Republican Party," which was pres- 
ently shortened to Republican party. The preference for 
the name Republican was due to the circumstances and 
emotions of the times. The French Revolution was at its . 
height, and sentiment on behalf of Republican France was 
extremely pronounced among the American masses. Re- 
publicanism, from the French association, was at that day 
synonymous with ultraism. This first settled name of the 
Jeffersonian organization was preserved throughout the 
existence of the Federalist party, and for some time after. 
But the mighty element that it represented was always 
styled the Democracy — affectionately by its members, de- 
risively by its antagonists; and it will so be called in our 
various mentions of the party for the period of its early 
career, extending to about the year 1828, when it assumed 
the name of the Democratic party, by .which it has since 
been known. 

The principles and doctrines upon which the Jeffersonian 
Democracy was constructed were of such irrefutable truth 
and resistless appeal that many of them have become axiom- 
atic sayings. Perhaps the most famous of these is, '' Equal 
and exact justice to all, and special privileges to none." 
Another is, '' Implicit confidence in the capacity of the 
people to govern themselves." A republic was defined by 
Jefferson as '' A government by citizens in mass, acting di- 
rectly and personally, according to rules established by the 
majority." He declared the will of the majority to be '' the 
natural law of every society, and the only sure guardian of 
the rights of man " ; and, explicating this precept, added, 
** Perhaps even this may sometimes err ; but its errors are 
honest, solitary, and short-lived. Let us, then, forever bow 
down to the general reason of society. We are safe with 
that, even in its deviations, for it soon, returns again to the 
right way." 

Jefferson's formulation of the purposes, extent, and 
limitations of government, which became the accepted 
creed of the Democracy, has been epitomized as follows i^ 



1 Edward M. Shepard, " The Democratic Party," 1892. 



14 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

"First— Just government is a mere instrument for ac- 
complishing certain useful and practical purposes which 
citizens in their other relations cannot accomplish, and pri- 
marily and chiefly, to protect men as, without trespassmg 
upon others, they pursue happiness in their own way. 
Every effort, by ceremonial or otherwise, to ascribe to 
government virtue or intelligence or invite to it honor, not 
belonging to the men who compose it, is an effort against 
the public welfare. 

" Second — The less the government does, the more it 
leaves to individual citizens to do, the better. Every grant 
of power to government ought, therefore, to be strictly and 
jealously construed as impairing to som.e extent the nat- 
ural rights of men. 

*' Third — There should be the maximum of local self- 
government. . Where it is doubtful between the Federal 
governmient and a State, or between a State and a lesser 
community, which should exercise a power, the doubt 
ought to be solved in favor of the government nearer the 
home, and more closely under the eye, of the individual 
citizen. 

" Fourth — It follows that the expenditure of money by the 
government ought to be the least possible; the collection 
and disbursement by public officials of money earned by 
other men tends to corruption not only in the jobbery and 
thievery more or less attending irresponsible expenditures 
of money, but perhaps more seriously in its tendency to 
create in the minds of citizens a sense of dependence upon 
government. 

" Fifth — To sum up all the rest, the government should 
make the least possible demand upon the citizen, and the 
citizen the least possible demand upon the government. 
The citizen should never suppose that he can be made virtu- 
ous or kept virtuous by law, or that he ought to be helped 
to wealth or ease by those of his fellows who happen to 
hold the offices, and for that reason to be collectively called 
' the government.' " 

These declarations constituted the foundations of the 



THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE 15 

Democracy in its bitter contest against Federalism. -'Con- 
sidered as practical propositions of government, they were 
startling innovations at that time ; to-day most people are . 
disposed to regard them as mild generalizations illustrative 
of the elementary nature of early American political verities. 
Discussion of them would involve mainly theoretical ques-* 
tions that have long ceased to be subjects of difference be- 
tween parties. It is sufficient to say that they defined the 
original position of the Democracy, led the party to success, 
and set it forward on its career with a character for identifi- 
cation with the masses of the people which was certain not 
only to prove its main reliance for the future, but to be in- 
sisted on as the permanent test of its merit in both pros- 
perity and adversity. 

CHAPTER n 
CHARACTER AND ABILITY 

1801-1809 

THE late Carl Schurz, certainly not a prejudiced witness 
on behalf of the Democratic party, referring to the 
change accomplished by the election of Jefferson to the 
Presidency in 1800, wrote C Life of Henry Clay '') : "The 
American people for the first time became fully conscious of 
the fact that the government really belonged to them, and 
not to a limited circle of important gentlemen." The result 
of that great contest was as lasting in its effects as it was 
revolutionary in its immediate decision. Federalism, as a 
governing establishment, never came back. Its complete 
and permanent collapse was due to two overwhelming facts : 
First, the stubborn and studied refusal of the Federalist 
party either to adapt itself in spirit to popular ideas and 
aspirations, or to become reconciled for prudent reasons to 
the manifest invincibility of popular power and accordingly 
compete with the Democracy for the favor of the ordinary 
public; and Second, the patriotism, energy, sound sense, 
and superb efficiency at once and always demonstrated by 
the Democracy in administering the government — virtues 



i6 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

and qualities to which were associated an entire popular 
predisposition and action. 

Concerning the impossible situation in which the Fed- 
eralist party elected to place itself by overweening pride 
and curious misconception of its capacity to successfully 
contend with the Democracy, it would be very unjust to 
animadvert in terms of stricture merely. The Federalist 
party is entitled to the everlasting respect of all Americans, 
and moreover to their gratitude to no small degree. It was 
conspicuously able in its distinctive membership, and singly 
and passionately devoted to the honor and welfare of the 
country. Its leaders — Hamilton, President Adams, John 
Jay, Rufus King, Fisher Ames, the Pinckneys, and a best 
of others — were illustrious statesmen and pure patriots. 
The revered Washington gave it his undoubted preference, 
and, after the failure of his attempt to maintain a biparty 
cabinet, surrounded himself with Federalist advisers ex- 
clusively. Under Federalist auspices the government was 
from its earliest organization distinguished by a masterly 
grasp of great questions and affairs, and conducted and sus- 
tained with distinction and dignity. By steadfast neutrality 
toward both France and England in the tremendous 
European struggle at that time raging; by the courageous 
negotiation of the Jay treaty with England and unwavering 
adherence to it in spite of terrific public clamor; by the 
vigorous suppression of domestic insurrection ; and by firm, 
just, and successful insistence upon our chosen national 
policy in exceedingly serious disputes arising with France, 
the administrations of Washington and Adams signally 
illustrated the governing ability of the Federalists in direc- 
tive respects. 

The direction of government, however, is secondary to 
the basis of government, and the basis of government rests 
upon the spirit and course of parties in their declared rela- 
tions to public institutions and policy. It is no conclusive 
recommendation of a government or party to say that it is 
competent. In the case of a party, even the virtue of com- 
petence cannot safely be awarded until it is seen whether 



CHARACTER AND ABILITY 17 

the party has the ability to react from defeat and maintain 
an intelligent and efficient opposition. As a recent ex- 
ample, the late Progressive party of Theodore Roosevelt 
was supposed to be preeminently competent until it failed 
to win the first and only election that it contested, 
when it died out almost as quickly as it had risen — 
entirely because it had not the power of endurance in 
opposition. The Federalists, with their undeniable merits, 
could not have failed to prove themselves continuingly 
valuable to the country if they had been content to 
assume the function of a true opposition; and it is 
impossible to revert to their melancholy history without 
regretting the stagnation into which their organization fell, 
and always languished, after its defeat in 1800. The services 
of its numerous excellent men were consequently either 
lost to the public or concerned with the merest futilities, 
such as detraction and invective, efforts to sow discord 
among the Democracy, fusions for temporary purposes with 
factional elements of the latter, resistance to the prosecu- 
tion of the War of 181 2, and general dissidence and obstruc- 
tion unregulated by any important original conceptions of 
policy. Thoroughly disliked by the people at large on 
account of its exclusive character, the Federalist party had 
become still further discredited by its enactment of the 
intolerant Alien and Sedition laws during Adams's adminis- 
tration. Those measures authorized the summary deporta- 
tion of all foreigners and the punishment of all citizens con- 
sidered politically objectionable by the government, and 
were especially aimed at French republicans and the ag- 
gressive newspaper writers of the opposed party. Unjusti- 
fied by either the existence of a state of war or any other 
public necessity appealing to reasonable minds, they were 
felt to be not only despotic, but symptomatic of an ultimate 
unbridled assumption of dictatorial authority by the central 
government if the Federalists should be continued in pov/er. 
The Democracy responded by adopting the famous Ken- 
tucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 in assertion of the 
rights of the States and the liberties of the people. 



i8 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

t Following the victory of Jefferson, and the installation of 
the Democracy in complete control of the government in 
1801, it was expected by the FederaHsts that'the interloping 
and inexpert new party would so misdirect and bungle 
affairs, confound public order, and dislocate approved in- 
stitutions that the country would soon be eager to get rid 
of it. None of those results happened, but precisely contrary 
ones. The two administrations of Jefferson (1801-9) were 
of immense value to the country for their firm and enter- 
prising statesmanship with its accomplishments of magnifi- 
cent territorial development by the Louisiana purchase, 
dispatch of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific, 
and enforcement of the honor and power of the nation by 
the war on the piratical states of the Mediterranean. But 
of even greater — inestimably greater — consequence, benefit, 
and blessing was the complete success of the democratic 
principle and system of government which these administra- 
tions established beyond all possibility of further dispute. 
The venerable conception of the indispensability of a 
superior governing element based upon social selectness 
and class egotism and solidarity, was thus made incapable 
of any continuing maintenance in the sphere of practical 
politics and dismissed forever to the private enjoyment of 
its only proper protagonists, that " limited circle of import- 
ant gentlemen " referred to by Mr. Schurz. It its place was 
substituted, confirmed, and permanently guaranteed the 
principle of Character and Ability as the sole recognizable 
qualifications and attributes for acceptable public service or 
permissible public authority. 

Character and Ability. Not Character, Ability, and for- 
mal '' Importance.'' Character and Ability, enough. These 
include all the rightful importance that can be ascribed to 
any one, and they exclude all the superficial pretensions of 
importance that are arrogated or presumed on account of 
mere fortunate personal elevation. They are to be found in 
every variety and condition of men and women, and they 
alone are pertinent to a claim to position or influence under 
popular government. They always assume the concomi- 



CHARACTER AND ABILITY 19 

tants of training, information, and judgment, of course in 
varying degrees, as also is the case among the formally 
well-born, rich, and " important." They generally assume 
personal success, and frequently personal wealth — of which 
the Democracy hoped to perceive, and in truth has ever 
perceived, an abundant share among its loving supporters. 
The favor of the Democracy for " the masses of the 
people " was never designed, and has never been practically 
directed, toward setting up a distinction. This favor was 
designed to obliterate a distinction in the body politic, at 
once functioned successfully to that end, and has since con- 
tinually operated to politically neutralize, so far as possible, 
those factors demanding distinctions on behalf of special 
interests which, as everyone knows, have always persisted 
and were never more self-conscious, more highly organized, 
or more active then at this present day. Representative of 
such special interests have been and are, on the one hand, 
the miscellaneous aggregations of theorists and particular- 
ists, and, on the other, the great and powerful forces by 
some called '' predatory," by others " reactionary," that per- 
petuate the spirit of Federalism though by no means its 
blundering methods. Arrayed against all these interests — 
theoretical, particular, and predatory — has stood, and stands 
now, the Democratic party as the party of the masses of the 
people, and therefore, considered in its permanent capacity, 
the major political constituency of the nation. 

Again, the Democracy's inclination to the masses has at 
no time signified a superior preference for that particular 
division of the public, any more than for any other division. 
The masses were rejected by the Federalists as not to be 
seriously considered in connection with the essential or- 
ganization and business of government; but they were 
accepted and encouraged by the Democracy, the same as 
all other elements — not more, not less, — in the spirit of the 
words of the Declaration of Independence, '' All men are 
created equal." So created in the respect of natural rights, 
and so to be recognized and treated by government ^ what 
they make of themselves privately and for public value is 



20 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

another matter, dependent partly upon their individual 
natures and capacities, partly upon varied conditions. It 
became at once, and remained, a fixed determination of the 
Democracy to give and hold for the masses an equal place 
at the foundation of government, specifically as to the right 
of suffrage; to deny them nothing in the respect of prefer- 
ment that they were qualified, by character and ability, to 
acquire; to have a favorable impulse toward them uni- 
formly ; but to expect them, equally with all others, to work 
out their own salvation. 

Moreover, the Democracy, in its influence with the 
masses, has invariably been a zealous and strict conservator 
of traditional American institutions. Of course we all know 
that in the inflamed imaginations of some of its persistent 
detractors, the Democracy seethes with diabolical instincts 
and designs contemplating the disruption and annihilation 
of the treasured system of the fathers. This is assuredly the 
very strangest of all strange obsessions, worthy of serious 
notice only in a History of Great Slanders and Defama- 
tions — a work that it is to be hoped will some day be 
written. From the outset of the government there never 
has been a moment when the Democracy could not, if so 
disposed, have led a powerful attack upon that time-honored 
system both in particular and general. And there never has 
been a moment when the Democracy has not been heart and 
soul, to the uttermost extremity, its defender and guaran- 
tor. All historians have observed that a generally strict, as 
against a latitudinarian, construction of the Constitution 
was from the earliest days advocated by the democracy 
in order to prevent not only arbitrary infractions of its 
terms but loose political actions in contempt of them. 
During the sixty consecutive years when, with but two 
brief intervals, the party exercised national power, only 
one amendment to the Constitution (reforming the man- 
ner of electing the President and Vice-President) was 
adopted. Both in office and in opposition the Democ- 
racy's performance of its responsibilities has been charac- 
terized most of all by a steadying influence because of its 



CHARACTER AND ABILITY 21 

assured possession, in all circumstances, of a concentrated 
vote, which, while not invulnerable to onslaughts by ex- 
tremist opponents of one kind or other, has nevertheless 
been of such homogeneous character as to give it at least 
the equilibrium. Subject frequently to energetic pressure as 
to matters of policy, the party has at times shown divisions 
in its councils, naturally to be expected in the career of a 
great and intensely virile popular organization. But these 
divisions, so far as they have affected its course, have 
marked only conflicting opinions among its own elements, 
opinions in time reconciled by the rule of the majority, 
whereupon the party has gathered new vigor, not as the 
resultant of any interaction with it by external forces, but 
by virtue of its indestructible vitality and positive position 
and leadership, which, appealing to dispassionate minds, 
have drawn to it new accessions. 

The foregoing reflections, fundamental to a general view, 
description, and estimate of the Democratic party, pertain 
equally to its earliest character and action in control of the 
government under Jefferson. One of the most conspicuous 
facts about the Democracy is, that it was not a gradual 
growth, but attained substantially its perfect development 
immediately. 

In his first inagural (March 4, 1801) Jefferson said: " We 
are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any 
among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to 
change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as 
monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may 
be tolerated when reason is left free to combat it. . . . 
Some honest men fear that a republican government cannot 
be strong — that this government is not strong enough. I 
believe this, on the contrary, the strongest on earth. I 
believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of 
the laws, would fly to the standard of the law and would 
meet invasions of the public order as his own personal 
concern." 

The conduct of the government by Jefferson, his very able 
cabinet, and a Congress at all times heavily Democratic in 



22 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

both houses, gave such satisfaction to the country that the 
Federalist opposition shrank to insignificance. Comment- 
ing upon this result he expressed serious concern, as he 
believed that a primary requirement of our institutions was 
a balanced party system, with vigilant and unrelaxing crit- 
icism of the party in power. In the interest of his own 
party, the Democracy, he took no means and sought no ends 
except those of service to the nation altogether uninfluenced 
by prejudice or passion and free from mere experiments 
and expedients. While abolishing the pomp and solemnity 
with which the Presidential office had been invested, and 
introducing simplicity into all the departments of adminis- 
tration, he left the constructive work oi the Federalists 
undisturbed. 

At the Presidential election of 1804 he was chosen for a 
second term by 162 Electoral votes to 14 for the Federalist 
candidate, Charles C. Pinckney. 

The great question of those times centered in the embar- 
rassments and difficulties of the national government conse- 
quent upon violations of our neutral rights by the belliger- 
ents in the Napoleonic wars. American maritime commerce 
was continually interfered with, especially by England, and 
there was an unprovoked attack on an American frigate by 
a British ship of war. Jefferson, disinclined to the extrem- 
ity of hostilities, sought, with the support of Congress, a 
solution of the trouble by suspending intercourse with the 
warring European nations, and the noted embargo of 1807 
was the result. Without reference to the question of the , 
merits of that measure as a substitute for war in the cir- 
cumstances, its adoption by the administration established 
a new and highly interesting principle of Democratic policy 
— the principle of fearless assumption of responsibility and 
unhesitating action by the President and Congress in great 
emergencies. Under the doctrine of strict construction of 
the Constitution, resort to the embargo, involving complete 
paralysis of foreign commerce, was certainly a matter of 
questionable '' granted power." But the administration felt 
that a resolute government, adequate to the prompt decision 



CHARACTER AND ABILITY 23 

of novel questions critically affecting the country, was 
more important than the refinements of caution. The 
people expect every efficiency on the part of the government ; 
the one thing they will never endure is timidity. In case 
of over-exercise of authority by the government, or any 
responsible branch of it — Executive, House, or Senate, — 
they have a sure remedy at the next election. 

Despite the unpopularity of the embargo, the Democ- 
racy's supremacy had become so firmly established that at 
the expiration of Jefferson's second term it was returned 
to power by a vote of nearly three to one in the Electoral 
College — James Madison, of Virginia, its regular nominee, 
receiving 122 votes; George Clinton, of New York, also a 
Democrat, 6; and Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, 
Federalist, 47. 

CHAPTER III 

EVOLUTIONARY PHASES 
1809-1825 

MADISON, like his predecessor, was given two terms in 
the Presidential office, throughout which both the 
Senate and House of Representatives continued Democratic 
by great majorities. At his second election, in 1812, the Fed- 
eralists refrained from making a party nomination for Presi- 
dent and endorsed the candidacy of DeWitt Clinton, of New 
York (nephew of Vice-President George Clinton), who 
represented a wing of the Democracy that in no way 
diverged from the Madisonians in principle, or even in 
course concerning emergent matters, but sought power on 
the strength of its leader's claims and the argument that as 
Virginia had been honored with the Presidency for twenty 
out of the twenty-four years since, the government was 
founded, it was time for her to step aside in favor of the 
great State of New York. Owing to the coalition of the 
Clintonians and Federalists, Madison was reelected by a 
much diminished majority; his Electoral vote was 128 and 
Clinton had 89. 



24 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

At that period the modern system of nominating conven- 
tions, platforms, letters of acceptance by candidates, na- 
tional party committees, etc., had not been devised. Origi- 
nally the Presidential nominees were selected by the *' gen- 
eral agreement " of a few party leaders, and that plan was 
always pursued by the Federalists except when they took 
up Clinton with the hope of defeating Madison. The 
Democracy introduced the method of nominating the Presi- 
dent and Vice-President by a Congressional caucus, com- 
posed of the party members of the House and Senate and 
coming together in the early part of each Presidential year. 
This was the nearest approximation to a representative and 
responsible national assemblage that was adapted to the 
early political conditions of the country. The suffrage was 
limited by property and other qualifications; it was the 
settled custom for the people to leave all current details to 
their qualified men who had been chosen to office; and as 
the facilities of travel were still primitive the holding of 
national conventions directly representative of the people 
would in practice have presented little attraction except to 
certain persons of more or less factious disposition, defeated 
or disappointed aspirants to office, and the like. The 
Democracy, however, desired to keep in as close touch as 
possible with the people of the country at large, and on the 
great question of the Presidency the quadrennial Congres- 
sional caucus was the best practical agency to that end. 
The caucus, moreover, completely represented the States, 
and its members were under the continual scrutiny and in- 
struction of their constituents. 

To enlarge the scope of popular participation in the 
government at its source was one of the foremost aims of 
the early Democracy. It was the Democracy that initiated 
and continually prosecuted the great and prolonged struggle 
in the States for extending the suffrage to all adult male 
citizens, subject only to local regulations as to residence, 
etc. Collateral to that struggle was the cause of free public 
education. Universal suffrage and the common school 
system were twin developments of the spirit of the Ameri- 



EVOLUTIONARY PHASES 25 

can Democracy. In saying this, of course no exclusive claim 
is made in favor of the Democratic party. The advance of 
education, in particular, was an object dear to good citizens 
in general; universal suffrage was long held to be a quite 
different matter, but by the constant and uncompromising 
insistence of the Democracy it won its way to complete 
acceptance, and in the end had no stronger supporters than 
those who by both natural and party inclination had little 
in common wth the masses. As universal suffrage meant 
more votes to be cast, it was for the highest interest of all 
politically active to put themselves in a receptive attitude 
toward the voters. 

It was wisely recognized by the framers of the Constitu- 
tion that the basis of suffrage was not a proper subject 
of stipulation by the national government. But the demo- 
cratic influences in the Constitutional convention insisted 
on and obtained a very important concession to the principle 
of a widely extended popular suffrage. In return for their 
consent to the choice of the President, Vice-President, and 
Senators by select bodies instead of popular vote, it was 
provided that the electors in each State for members of the 
national House of Representatives should have '* the quali- 
fications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch 
of the State Legislature.". Thus the sanction of national 
authority was given to any desired liberality of suffrage per- 
mission, no matter how extreme. This was purely a demo- 
cratic measure, and upon its foundation the Democracy as 
a party, against strenuous opposition, fought for the aboli- 
tion of property and similar artificial distinctions in the 
electorate until not a vestige of them remained. The con- 
test lasted for fifty years. (For a dispassionate account of 
the various phases of the suffrage question, from colonial 
times to the present, the reader is referred to the " Cyclo- 
pedia of American Government," article on Suffrage.) 

Without discussing in this place the movements for 
further suffrage extension that have since developed, with 
results of commanding importance and interest, it may be 
remarked that none of them would have been to the slight- 



26 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

est degree possible without the foundation of universal 
manhood suffrage for citizens that was secured by the 
persistent efforts of the Democratic party in State after 
State until every resistance was overcome. The great prin- 
ciple upon which the struggle was fought was that of the 
obligation of government to guarantee equal rights to all — 
that is, all possessing free citizenship and exercising it as 
an active personal function unimpaired by offenses against 
the law or by other disqualifications specified by competent 
authority. The question of citizenship for people not free, 
of course did not exist ; and the question of the entrance of 
women upon the theater of political action had hardly been 
propounded. With the changes of later times it came to 
pass, first, that there were no longer people not free; and 
second, that the women increasingly demanded the ballot. 
Each of these situations involved not merely peculiar, but 
extraordinary, special questions, considerations, and con- 
ditions as related to the grant of suffrage. In the case of 
the people formerly not free, a favorable decision was 
promptly made by the substantially imperative direction of 
a tremendously powerful political party actuated largely 
by the expectation of great advantage for itself ; in the case 
of the women, the conclusion was approached very grad- 
ually, as in the case of the Democracy's struggle to fully 
establish equal manhood suffrage — a result which, because 
of the principle concerned, marks the starting-point of the 
whole practical claim to " Votes for Women." 

Of high importance also in the list of popular reforms 
that attended the rise and progress of the Democracy, was 
the transfer to the individual voters of the real power in the 
election of the President and Vice-President. This power 
was at first exercised in a number of the States by the 
Legislatures, which reserved to themselves the appointment 
of the Presidential Electors and tenaciously refused to sur- 
render the privilege. The pressure of public demand, how- 
ever, brought a slow but sure change, and in 1828, when 
Jackson won his first election and the modern Democratic 
party entered upon its career, only one State, South Caro- 



EVOLUTIONARY PHASES _ 27 

lina, adhered to the old plan of legislative choice of the 
Electors. 

With the entire popular 'success of the Democracy and 
the disproof of all the prejudiced arguments against it on 
supposed practical and prudential grounds, the surviving 
opposition of the Federalists became more and more nar- 
rowed to the older generation of irreconcilables. The young 
men, of whatever antecedents and associations, upon en- 
gaging in political activity, arrayed themselves, with but 
very few exceptions, on the side of the Democracy. Emi- 
nently representative of these were John Quincy Adams, son 
of President Johij Adams, and Henry Clay— both of whom, 
in full accord with the spirit and course of the Democracy, 
were among its vigorous and valuable champions and were 
by its power elevated to the most distinguished positions 
that they attained in their long and ceaselessly active public 
careers. 

Certain celebrated acts of the government during the 
Madison administrations (1809-17) evidenced the bold and 
independent attitude of the Democracy in the treatment of 
questions decidedly complex from the early constitutional 
point of view. In those days the determination of most 
large matters of policy was necessarily experimental. The 
important things were not such slight precedent as ob- 
tained after only some twenty years of experience, or 
studious applications of doctrine to realities for mere doc- 
trine's sake, but freedom from rigidity and readiness to 
grapple with problems despite sharp divergence of opinion 
in the party. Marshall, the great Chief-Justice, was inter- 
preting the Constitution along enterprising lines; and the 
Democratic government showed a comparable spirit of 
breadth, which, moreover, was undisturbed by apprehen- 
sions as to involvement in heresies to be pointed out and 
analyzed by surprised future commentators. 

For in that Madisonian era the Democracy favored and 
established a United States government bank; aye, it 
favored and established a protective tariff. Both of these 
actions were taken in 181 6. Five years before (likewise 



28 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

under Madison), Congress, after an exciting controversy 
and by a close vote, had refused to rechafter the Bank of 
the United States which Hamilton founded in 1791 pursuant 
to his plans for centralization ; but that Congressional action 
was now reversed, the bank was recreated for a term of 
twenty years, and the Democratic President signed the 
bill. Regarding the tariff, a law was passed which also 
followed Hamiltonian conceptions ; for the first time protec- 
tive duties, as such, were laid. Thus the Democracy, in two 
particular matters of great moment, took a course very 
distinctly showing that it did not limit its scope of practical 
action by any set rule — not even the set rule of ** strict con- 
struction." 

The bank and tariff acts of 181 6 were measures incidental 
to the endeavors of the country to recover from the financial 
and commercial prostration caused by the war with Great 
Britain. They were believed to be on the whole wise and 
necessary in the prevailing conditions, and likely to prove 
sound in policy and effects provided the encouragement that 
they extended to special interests was not abused or made 
a pretext for undue future demands. They were in the 
same class with the two outstanding acts of Jefferson's 
administrations — the Louisiana purchase and the embargo. 
Assuming the desirability of acquiring Louisiana in 1803, 
the necessity of meeting the dangerous foreign emergency 
of 1807, and the wisdom of some positive remedies for the 
domestic ills of 1816, either prompt and conclusive govern- 
mental action had to be taken in each case, or the empower- 
ment of a constitutional amendment, involving long drawn- 
out proceedings and therefore not available for the specific 
object, had to be awaited. 

In the matter of the government bank, the Democratic 
party later found cause to terminate its sanction, and in 
consequence was emphatically sustained by the country 
at the Presidential elections of 1832 and 1836. As for the 
tariff, it consistently held to the protectionist idea for a 
number of years, strengthening its original legislation on 
the subject from time to time, particularly in 1824 and 



EVOLUTIONARY PHASES . 29 

1828; but in the end, regarding the previously '' infant " in- 
dustries as having been sufficiently cared for, it promulgated 
the historic doctrine of " tariff for revenue only," which 
received the general concurrence of the people until the 
Civil War. 

Third in the line of Democratic Presidents was James 
Monroe, of Virginia, elected in 1816 by 183 Electoral votes 
to 34 for Rufus King, Federalist, of New York, and reelected 
in 1820 by 231 to i for John Quincy Adams, of Massachu- 
setts. The Federalist party, always decrepit nationally 
since 1800, now gave up the ghost, and there ensued the 
famed " era of good feeling ''—making a living reality of 
Jefferson's words, "We are all Republicans, we are' all 
Federalists," because the formative work of the party of 
Democracy was completed and unanimously accepted. 

That work, it cannot too frequently be remembered and 
emphasized, consisted in. First, the organization, develop- 
ment, and firm establishment of the American nation as a 
successful, harmonious, orderly, and absolutely efficient de- 
mocracy — a comprehensive result never paralleled in any 
other powerful country in the history of the world ; Second, 
the administration of the government and the direction of 
all political action conformably to the principle of equal 
rights for all, with loving sympathy for the masses of the 
people and practical inclination toward them because of 
their much greater need for a champion than the classes 
enjoying a strong economic position and its associated ad- 
vantages — in other words, for every reason and considera- 
tion of eternal justice; and Third, and chiefest accomplish- 
ment of all because it guaranteed the security of every other, 
the advancement of the party of Democracy itself to a 
position of predominating and ultimately supreme influence 
and power by the virtue and force of its character and 
principles, its splendid record under the guidance of its 
statesmen, and its adequacy to that most responsible busi- 
ness of government, vigorous and fearless action on public 
questions. 

Neither can it too frequently be remembered and em- 



30 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

phasized that what the party of Democr-acy was in funda- 
mental respects upon completing its evolution in Monroe's 
time, the Democratic party has continuously been since and 
is now. From the very nature of its original composition, 
precepts, and declared purposes its character was perma- 
nently fixed, and the successful substitution of a reverse 
nature was made permanently prohibitive. Casting its lot 
with the unpretentious elements of the public — the merely 
normal average elements, — not for their artificial or forced 
exaltation, but for their equal right and welfare, a control- 
ling support for it from contrary elements actuated by class 
consciousness became necessarily forever impossible : — such 
elements instinctively and passionately want a different 
kind of party, have always chosen one, and will always 
have one. Yet the broad impartiality and comprehensive 
justice of the position taken and maintained by the Democ- 
racy secured and have preserved for it the whole-hearted 
cooperation of thoughtful and forceful people in all ranks 
of society. Its leaders have ever been strong, able, and 
noted for the most convinced belief in the plain truths that 
it proclaims. Upon the fundamental matters referred to 
there never has been the slightest division in the Demo- 
cratic party 

Monroe's administrations (1817-25) were marked by sev- 
eral great events, foremost of which, for its lasting effects, 
was the declaration of the Monroe doctrine in his annual 
message to Congress dated December 2, 1823. Florida, em- 
bracing not only the present State of that name but the 
Gulf coast running west to the Sabine River, was acquired 
from Spain by treaty (1819). The Missouri Compromise, 
which settled the political slavery question for a quarter 
of a century, was adopted (1820). 

At the Presidential election of 1824, the Federalist party 
having become extinct and no new organization having 
arisen, the Democracy in the various States divided in sup- 
port of four candidates, all of whom were men of eminent 
repute as leaders of the party — Andrew Jackson, of Ten- 
nessee ; John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts ; William H. 



EVOLUTIONARY PHASES _ 31 

Crawford, of Georgia; and Henry Clay, of Kentucky. The 
Electoral result was as follows : Jackson, 99 ; Adams, 84 ; 
Crawford, 41; Clay, 37. As no one had a majority the de- 
cision was made by the House of Representatives, which, 
voting by States, chose Adams. This result was obtained 
by a combination of the Adams and Clay States. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE JACKSONIAN ERA 

1825-1844 

NOTWITHSTANDING the great excitement attend- 
ing the Presidential contest of 1824, it was not 
fought on any questions or question of policy, but was 
altogether a personal competitive affair to decide for 
the immediate future the leadership of the Democracy, 
and therefore of the united political constituency of the 
nation. The result was indeed for the passing time 
only. Popular support had favored General Jackson 
more than any other of the contestants; and his 
character, traits, record, and well-known views combined 
to make him increasingly a popular hero, especially as 
he had been deprived of the Presidency by a union of 
the Adams and Clay forces, both of which, it was well 
understood, were likely to incline to programs and tend- 
encies, and be susceptible to influences, differentiated from 
those that distinguished and controlled the radical Democ- 
racy. It was hence inevitable that the Jacksonians would 
insist upon the election of their leader in 1828. On the 
other hand, the one positive political idea tnarked out by 
the Adams administration (1825-29) was that of its own 
supposed title to the succession in 1828 and again in 1832; 
for Adams expected a second term, and, recognizing Clay 
as his heir, appointed him Secretary of State. All the pre- 
vious Democratic Exeuctives had been reelected,, and, after 
serving out their eight years, had been followed in tliR- 
Presidency by their Secretaries of State. 



32 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

But there is no dependable rule of succession in a democ- 
racy, or even of secure traditions or arrangements for per- 
sonal aims — as numerous ambitious men have found to their 
grief. Jackson overwhelmingly defeated Adams in 1828, 
and won an even greater victory over Clay in 1832. The 
Electoral vote in 1828 stood: — Jackson, 178; Adams, 83. In 
1832 Jackson received 219 Electoral votes; Clay, 49; John 
Floyd, of Virginia (South Carolina nullification candidate), 
1 1 ; and William Wirt, of Maryland (Anti-Masonic 
party), 7. 

With the first administration of Jackson (1829-33) the 
country again, and this time permanently, came under a 
two-party system. The ascendant Jacksoniaris discarded 
the old redundant title of Democratic-Republican party, 
and took that of Democratic party. Their opponents, the 
Adams-Clay following, organized under the name of Na- 
tional Republican party, which was retained until after the 
campaign of 1832, when that of Whig party was substituted. 
Both the Democratic party and the National Republican 
or Whig party were absolutely and at all times non-sec- 
tional; no great sectional party, dividing the north and 
south, existed until the establishment of the modern Repub- 
lican organization in 1854. A critical situation between the 
north and south, imperiling the Union, had supervened in 
1819-20, when the proposal to admit the Territory of 
Missouri to statehood with permission to retain the institu- 
tion of slavery was under debate in Congress. The north 
strenuously objected, and the south as strenuously insisted. 
By the efforts of great and patriotic men, the famous Mis- 
souri Compromise of 1820 was the result. Under that set- 
tlement Missouri was admitted with the permission of 
slavery, but slavery was thenceforth prohibited in all the 
rest of the as yet unorganized national domain lying north 
of Missouri's southern boundary, the parallel 36 deg. 30 min. 
The prescribed domain comprehended all the non-organized 
western territory (excepting Arkansas and what is now 
Oklahoma) which the United States owned at that time 
and, indeed, until the annexation of Texas (1845). Both 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 33 

the north and south (so far as the political leaders were 
concerned) being satisfied with the Missouri Compromise, 
the sectional excitement totally ceased, and in the recon- 
struction of parties that eventuated from the schism in the 
Democracy in 1824 not a trace of sectional feeling, in the 
political regard, remained. 

The National Republican- Whig party began its career 
with much confidence, which apparently had every justifi- 
cation. In the first place, its leader was the great Henry 
Clay, and many of the most powerful intellectual charac- 
ters, including Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Rufus 
Choate, Thomas Ewing, and John M. Clayton were con- 
spicuous in its councils. Next, while enjoying the favor 
of those who had formerly been Federalists or who were 
Federalistically predisposed, it rejected the discredited no- 
tions and avoided the strategic errors of the Federalist party, 
and, obedient in good faith to the popular will, was received 
and treated by the public with recognition accordingly. 
Withal, it prided itself upon being select in every creditable 
sense, and select it certainly was — even the majestic Re- 
publican party of our day is not one whit more so; it was 
accorded devoted support from among the honored families 
of the north and the aristocratic planters of the south, and 
its ordinary membership showed a shining array of the tal- 
ented and efficient. And finally it possessed issues, very 
important and appealing issues, for which it fought with 
intense conviction and splendid ability. 

But it did not have the votes. Except on rare occasions, 
when the Democratic party temporarily suffered popular 
discipline or defeated itself by scattering its forces. 

Jackson launched forth upon an aggressively partisan 
rule. Everything had to be Democratic, and notably the 
incumbency of the offices, down to the postmasterships and 
clerkships. He introduced the spoils system, and, like 
everytlnng else introduced by that mighty man, it lasted. 
When the Whigs came into power the spoils seemed good 
to them ; and the Republicans in their time, as we all know, 
have never been happy without the spoils. We shall not 



34 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

concern ourselves with an exculpation of Jackson for his 
startling performances in the matter of the spoils (about 
which, truth to tell, most Democrats are now a bit sensi- 
tive), further than to remark that they represented pri- 
mordial impulses of human nature that were singularly 
strong in him — to be kind to one's friends, and as for one's 
foes, " treat 'em rough." We have happily lived to see the 
development of a more discriminating policy regarding the 
ordinary offices of the civil service — a policy with which, in 
its establishment, the name of another great Democratic 
President, Cleveland, is preeminently identified. 

At an early period Jackson took a positive stand against 
renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States, on 
the grounds of the incompatibility with free institutions of 
the consolidation with the gqvernment of a great private 
moneyed corporation, the extra-constitutionality of such a 
policy, and the exercise by the bank of sinister power and 
corrupting influences in connection with politics. A tre- 
mendous struggle was precipitated. Clay made the bank 
question the chief issue in his Presidential campaign of 
1832, and was crushingly beaten, as already noted; where- 
upon Jack:son, soon after the beginning of his second term, 
went to the extremity of removing the government deposits 
from the bank, although its charter was not to expire until 
1836. The discussion continued to rage, but Jackson and 
the Democratic party stood immovable. The final results 
will be noticed in due order. 

The State of South Carolina in those strenuous Jack- 
sonian times harbored a serious grievance against the na- 
tional government. The trouble had nothing to do with the 
slavery question, but was purely economic, about the homely 
matters of opportunity to get on in the world and the price 
to pay accordingly. Owing to high protective excesses in 
the interests of northern manufacturers that had been per- 
petrated for some years, particularly under the tariff of 
1828— the historic '* tariff of abominations "—the agricul- 
tural south was suffering. It was conceived by the South 
Carolinians that the proper thing was to '' nullify " the Fed- 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 35 

eral tariff laws — to refuse to permit them to be enforced so 
far as their State was concerned. Such a proceeding, if car- 
ried to its logical result, of course meant liberty of secession 
by South Carolina, or any other refractory State at its 
pleasure. The idea was at first put forth tentatively by 
means of certain intimations, with the hope that the Demo- 
cratic President would consider it all right, or at least would 
not interfere. He was a stern and pragmatical man, and it 
was well to know what he would do. At a public dinner on 
Jefferson's birthday, April 2, 1830, Jackson, after listening 
to several regular toasts in approbation of nullification, or 
vAih that tendency, arose and gave the company a volunteer 
toast : " Our Federal Union : it must be preserved." This 
left no doubt as to his attitude. Nevertheless, South Caro- 
lina nullified (1832), trusting, it was afterv/ard explained by 
John C. Calhoun (at that time Vice-President) that Jackson 
would tolerate a *' peaceable secession." But the President 
at once issued a proclamation (December 16) declaring that 
the tariff laws of the nation, like all others, must be obeyed, 
sent a naval force to Charleston harbor, and ordered General 
Scott to be ready to move the army if necessary. In his 
proclamation were these immortal words : " I consider the 
power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one 
State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contra- 
dicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthor- 
ized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which 
it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which 
it was formed." 

There was of course no armed conflict, although South 
Carolina took the result with no good grace. Calhoun, in 
protest, resigned as Vice-President, and in 1836 the State, 
still resentful, voted against the Democratic national ticket. 

By this action Jackson coerced a sovereign State, as in 
the instance of the bank he annihilated a powerful and en- 
trenched government institution. The principle in each 
case was the same— the superiority of the common welfare 
to special interest. 

The National Republican-Whig party was founded on 



3&- THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

/ 
two great issues : First, thorough maintenance and appHca- 
tion of the principle and system of tariff protection ; Second, 
assumption and prosecution by the Federal government of 
internal improvements — i. e., important works not under- 
taken, or likely to be, by the individual States, especially 
the building of avenues of interstate communication. In 
view of the logical sources of principal support for these 
two issues — the special classes who believed in govern- 
mental favors, benevolences, and stimulative initiatives in 
financial and commercial matters so long as these were de- 
vised and operated in certain directions of sufficient dignity 
and importance, — it was natural that the National Repub- 
licans and their successors, the Whigs, should welcome 
with great satisfaction the new issue presented to them by 
Jackson, that of the government bank, and become ardent 
partisans of the menaced institution. 

On the subject of the tariff, the Whig party (we will now 
drop the National Republican name, which obtained only 
temporarily) was originally without any real argument 
except that of the resolve to defend the protective policy 
against all possible future acts of retrogression by the 
Democrats. A strong, in fact an ultra, protective system 
was in force, and the Jackson administration passed an- 
other protective law in 1832, which proved the last straw 
for South Carolina and precipitated the nullification. Then 
came a new embarrassment for the protectionist Whigs. A 
troublesome surplus revenue had accumulated from the 
tariff duties. The surplusage had to be stopped by tariff 
reductions and readjustments, and Clay and the other Whig 
statesmen joined in the necessary proceedings while cher- 
ishing in their hearts the principle of protection. In due 
time the Democratic party did the expected, totally re- 
verted from the protective idea, declared for a revenue 
tariff, established the law of the land accordingly, and on 
that basis the government was conducted and the country 
prospered until the Civil War. The Whigs never accom- 
plished anything with their protectionist doctrine, and the 
people were never aware of loss or hardship resulting from 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 37 

their failure to do so. Yet it cannot be doubted that the 
people would have been heard from in any such case. There 
was at one time, as we have seen, an actual rebellion on ac- 
count of a too high, and especially too discriminative tariff. 
But who ever heard of any popular uprising, rage, or dis- 
gust coinciding with or corresponding to deprivation of 
those protective largesses which in some quarters are con- 
sidered so promotive of success and happiness? 

Respecting internal improvements on a program of Fed- 
eral assumptions and acts, the Whigs were equally unsuc- 
cessful. The Democratic party had by this time gone as far 
as it would permit itself to go in enactments presumptive 
of central authority concerning proposals and details that 
involved constitutional questions. Both Monroe and Mad- 
ison, while favoring, on general principle, schemes of in- 
ternal improvement by government action and at govern- 
ment expense, had considered such schemes improper prac- 
tically unless authorized by a constitutional amendment. 
The balanced arrangement of Federal and State powers, 
responsibility, and obligations which was the distinguish- 
ing virtue of the Constitution, made it inexpedient for the 
national government to go into the States with improve- 
ment projects of its own. The States and the people locally, 
with the private business interests, were expected to be 
watchful over internal matters,^ to exert corresponding 
enterprise, and to take care of the expense and administra- 
tion, ^ate rights^ for which the Democratic party stood, 
implied State duties. Against the Democratic opposition to 
internal improvements the Whigs were unable to make any 
headway, and there never was the slightest indication that 
the people were with them on that issue. Their two suc- 
cesses at Presidential elections (1840 and 1848) were fol- 
lowed by no positive results of any kind for their party 
policies. The first Whig President, William Henry Har- 
rison, died after only a month in office; his successor, John 
Tyler, was recreant to the party; and the third, Zachary 
Taylor (who also died while serving), and fourth, Millard 
Fillmore, had to devote themselves to much more grave 



38 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

affairs than those of either internal improvements or tariff, 
and, moreover, never had the advantage of party control 
of Congress. It is interesting to speculate as to the prob- 
able results in relation to internal improvements if the 
Whig, instead of the Democratic, party had been dominant 
for the period, say, from 1833 to 1861. What would then 
have been the national policy about interstate railroad and 
telegraph construction, development, and control? Could 
the Whigs, with any consistency, have left those functions 
and operations altogether to private enterprise? It is a 
curious question. 

With their third issue, favoring the government bank, the 
Whigs were no more successful than with their programs of 
protection and internal improvements. At the beginning 
of the great controversy about the bank (1829) they ap- 
peared to have the advantage so far as representative public 
opinion was concerned. Although the Democrats were 
very largely in the majority in each house of Congress, the 
opposition by the administration to renewal of the bank 
charter was so far from receiving concerted party support 
that when the recharter bill came up for actioff in the sum- 
mer of 183I2 it was passed. The President vetoed it, the en- 
suing campaign was fought on the issue which he thus 
made, and he was overwhelmingly sustained by the people. 
This decided the fate of the bank, which, however, still had 
four years to run under its existing charter. But Jackson 
had not ended with his war on the institution. By re- 
moving the government deposits (1833) he revived the 
dispute, and it now became even more bitter. He was 
charged with persecution of the bank, and also with exer- 
cising dictatorial power. The Senate passed a resolution of 
censure against him, but after acrimonious debate lasting 
through still another Presidential contest, that body voted 
to expunge the resolution from its records (January, 1837), 
and he accordingly retired to private life completely vindi- 
cated. 

At the election of 1836 the stormy events of the preceding 
eight years, though attended by much agitation and dissen-* 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 39 

sion among the Democrats, left the Whigs quite spiritless. 
Unable to unite on a national ticket, they distributed their 
votes, according to State preferences, among three Presi- 
dential nominees of their party (William Henry Harrison, 
of Ohio; Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts; and Willie P. 
^ Mangum, of North Carolina), and in a portion of the south 
they adopted as their own a fourth candidate, Hugh L. 
White, of Tennessee, an anti-administration Democrat. In 
the Democratic party the personality and record of Jack- 
son, conjoined with the strong position of the great ma- 
jority in support of his course and policies, brought an end 
to the differences, except among some of the southern 
elements; — it may be remarked that as long as the Whig 
party lasted the Democrats had but an uncertain tenure in a 
number of the southern States. Martin Van Buren, of New 
York, Secretary of State under Jackson and a most saga- 
cious and forceful leader of -the party, was unanimously 
nominated for President by the national convention. The 
Electoral vote stood: Van Buren, 170; Harrison, 73; White, 
26; Webster, 14; Mangum, 11. For Vice-President, Richard 
M. Johnson (Democrat), of Kentucky, had 147 Electoral 
votes, just half of the whole number; he was afterward 
chosen to the office by the Senate — this being the only in- 
stance of failure by the people to elect the Vice-President. 
While failing to show any approach to success on the 
Presidential result, the Whigs made gains in the Senate and 
House of Representatives, lacking only a few votes of 
enough to control the latter. The panic of 1837 followed, ^^^ 
a decided reaction on the subject of financial policy set in 
against the Democratic party. This, however, brought no re- 
versal, so far as the bank was concerned, during Van 
Buren's administration (1837-41). The bank had been abol- 
ished for sufficient reasons ; its resuscitation would mean 
simply a revival, in undoubtedly aggravated form, of the 
evil of a privileged central monopoly as a ''regulator" of 
finance and politics; and neither Van Buren nor any sub- 
sequent Democratic Executive gave the slightest considera- 
tion to the appeals in its favor. Moreover, the Van Buren 



40 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

administration rejected all the importunate requests for 
loans to private citizens and interests during the panic, on 
the ground that in no emergency could the government, 
responsible to the people, permit itself to be used as a means 
of special support for individuals or their enterprises. An 
objection to Jackson's course with the bank was that, while 
destroying the old system, he substituted only the tentative 
one of placing the government deposits with selected bank- 
ing concerns. Van Buren set forth without delay to perfect 
an affirmative measure concerning the deposits, and devised 
the plan of the ''Independent Treasury," making the gov- 
ernment itself the sole depository and thereby carrying to 
its logical conclusion the Jacksonian policy of the divorce- 
ment of the government from private financial and trade 
affairs and influences. In that effort he did not immediately 
have the cooperation of Congress, but an act was finally 
passed which he had the pleasure of signing on July 4, 
1840, describing it as a new Declaration of Independence. 
This was repealed by the Whigs in 1841, but was reestab- 
lished by the great Democratic administration of Polk in 
1846 — since which time the Independent Treasury with its 
Sub-Treasury ramifications has been retained without 
change by every successive administration and unquali- 
fiedly commended by writers of all political beliefs as one 
of the splendid inheritances of the government and country 
from Democratic initiative and rule. 

In 1840 the Democratic party met its first national defeat, 
William Henry Harrison, Whig, being chosen President by 
234 Electoral votes to 60 for Van Buren, and the Whigs ob- 
taining a substantial majority in each house of Congress. 
Before any legislative results could be accomplished by the 
Whig administration. President Harrison died (April 4, 
1 841), and the Vice-President, John Tyler, of Virginia, took 
his place. Tyler throughout his term (1841-45) went coun- 
ter to all the plans of the Whig party: hence the familiar 
verb, tylerize— '' to act against the party that has elected 
one to office " (Standard Dictionary). Though signing the 
bill for doing away with the Independent Treasury, he 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 41 

vetoed two measures designed to institute a government- 
controlled central bank. After he had finished with the 
bank scheme, the situation in which that whole ambitious 
project stood needed but a single word for its description — 
Finis. The people returned promptly to emphatic approval 
of the Jacksonian financial position, giving the Democratic 
party a majority of 71 in the House at the Congressional 
elections of 1842. Even the great Whig leaders who had 
most positively advocated the bank's cause never ventured 
to renew the agitation. When Clay made his next race for 
the Presidency, in 1844, his platform was absolutely silent 
on the bank subject. 

The official position of the Democratic party concerning 
the bank was continually expressed in the following words 
in its national platforms : '* That Congress has no power to 
charter a national bank ; that we believe such an institution 
one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country, 
dangerous to our republican institutions and the liberties of 
the people, and calculated to place the business of the coun- 
try within the control of a concentrated money power and 
above the laws and the will of the people ; and that the re- 
sults of Democratic legislation in this and all other financial 
measures upon which issues have been made between the 
two political parties of the country, have demonstrated to 
candid and practical men of all parties their soundness, 
safety, and utility in all business pursuits." 

In this declaration the words " national bank " meant, of 
course, a central privileged institution similar in organiza- 
tion, powers, and tendencies to the old discarded establish- 
ment. 

During the period reviewed in this chapter there was a 
radical change from the original ideas and methods of party 
organization, control, nominations, and operations. In 
preparation for the campaign of 1824 a Congressional caucus 
was called, mainly in the interest of Crawford, one of the 
Presidential aspirants, but the attendance was small and 
the action taken received no recognition from the Democ- 
racy at large ; this was the last of the nominating caucuses. 



42 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Four years later the personal issue between Jackson and 
Adams was squarely defined, and no national nominating 
ceremonies were necessary. But in 1832, with two great 
parties in the field and actively competing for general sup- 
port, it was decided by the leaders of both to refer the nomi- 
nations of President and Vice-President directly to the 
people through their representatives in special assemblages. 

The first Democratic national convention was held in 
Baltimore, May 21, 1832, Robert Lucas, of Ohio, presiding. 
As Jackson's renomination unanimously was a foregone 
conclusion, no rule was adopted to govern the choice of the 
Presidential candidate, but it was decided that a two-thirds 
vote should be required for the Vice-Presidential selection. 
At the next national convention the two-thirds rule was 
applied to ^ both the Presidential and Vice-Presidential 
nominations; and it has since been adhered to in every na- 
tional convention of the party. 

From the national nominating system was evolved the 
plan of precise formulation and declaration of party prin- 
ciples and issues in platforms, and in 1840 the Democrats 
presented to the public their first national platform. The 
first national committee of the party was established in 
1848. 

The inception of minor parties, undertaking to compete 
on certain questions with the two powerful political organi- 
zations, dates from the campaign of 1832, when the Anti- 
Masonic party made its appearance on the fantastic issue 
of suppression of all secret oath-bound orders, and actually 
carried a State, Vermont, for its Presidential ticket. 

In 1840 the Abolition, or Liberty, party, representing the 
radical sentiment of opposition to slavery, was instituted. 

Concerning these and the numerous other sporadic 
parties that have since sprung up, it is needless to comment 
with any particularity. All of them have proved utterly 
futile, and their annals belong merely to the miscellanies, 
marginalia, and curiosities of politics. The genius of our 
institutions has required from the beginning, and requires 
to-day, a two-party system, and a two-party system only. 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 43 

The American people believe in positive politics conducted 
by two major forces, each of them strong enough to fairly 
balance the other, and each broad enough, from the view- 
point of inherited American standards and principles of 
government, to appeal powerfully to the comprehensive 
public. It has happened that a major party has become de- 
cadent and defunct; this may occur again. But no major 
party has gone into dissolution as the consequence of minor 
party pressure or pretension ; and no minor party has risen 
to the dignity of a major party or even a permanently 
weighty third party. There have been serious splits in the 
great parties, which have presented certainly the most 
favorable situations possible to be imagined for hopeful 
third party development; but in that direction nothing, 
absolutely nothing, has resulted except for the campaigns 
immediately in prospect. . No teaching of American political 
history is more persistent or striking than that of the futility 
of minor party voting. 

CHAPTER V 

THE MEXICAN WAR AND THE WILMOT 

PROVISO 

1844-1848 

anr^HK American Democracy place their trust in the in- 
X telligence, the patriotism, and the discriminating 
justice of the American people. We regard this as a dis- 
tinctive feature of our political creed, which we are proud 
to maintain before the world as the great moral element in 
a form of government springing from and upheld by the 
popular will." 

With these words all the early national platforms of the 
Democratic party began. In keeping with their spirit was an 
unfaltering and consistent course, with which the charac- 
teristic disposition and action of the Whigs sharply con- 
trasted. The inconsistencies of Henry Clay are proverbial. 
Resembling them were the frequent embarrassments and 
hesitations of his party. Neither the Whig party nor Clay 



44 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

lacked aggressiveness in maintaining an issue when once 
decided upon. But finding it impossible to make progress 
with the people on their issues after due endeavors, the 
Whigs had recourse to circumspection and expediency, 
hoping thus to win popular favor away from the positive 
Democrats. Such has never proved the method of good 
politics in the long run. 

In the latter part of Tyler's administration the Texas 
question became acute. Texas, adjoining the Louisiana Pur- 
chase at the southwest and belonging first to Spain and 
then, after the successful Mexican Revolution, to the re- 
public of Mexico, had been largely penetrated and settled 
by citizens of our southern States, who, as was the custom 
of those times among southern Americans, owned negro 
slaves. These settlers revolted against Mexico and set up 
a separate Texan republic (1836). They next sought admis- 
sion to the United States by annexation, which meant the 
addition of another slave State to the Union, and also war 
with Mexico on account of the claim of the Texans to a 
vast territory still in Mexican possession, extending to the 
Rio Grande River from its mouth to its source. Some 
years elapsed before the annexation proposal was definitely 
formulated. President Tyler favored it, and early in 1844 
an annexation treaty was presented to the Senate, which 
that body rejected — the Whig members and a few northern 
Democrats voting against it. 

Coinciding with the discussion about Texas was that in 
relation to settling the northwestern (Oregon) boundary 
dispute with Great Britain. The Oregon Country, so called 
(comprising the present States of Oregon and Washington), 
had long been under '' joint occupation " by the United 
States and Great Britain, pending diplomatic adjustment of 
the boundary. Diplomatic negotiations were still in pro- 
gress throughout Tyler's administration. There was no 
indication as to the probable outcome. The people were 
impatient for a decision, and a large element demanded the 
full amount of the American territorial claim, reaching to 
the parallel of 54 deg. 40 min. 



MEXICAN WAR AND WILMOT PROVISO 45 

Therefore at the opening of the Presidential campaign of 
1844 two immensely important territorial questions, affect- 
ing the destfny of the nation, were under consideration. 
The Oregon controversy, no matter what boundary line 
should ultimately be drawn, would necessarily result in our 
acquiring title to a new domain at the north, from which 
slavery would be excluded. The Texas dispute involved 
the acceptance or refusal of a new domain at the south, in 
which slavery had already been established by its inhabit- 
ants. In both matters the rights and fortunes of enterpris- 
ing and brave American pioneers and home-builders, who 
were looking to our government for sympathy and support, 
were at stake. 

On May 27, 1844, six weeks after the defeat of the Texas 
treaty in the Senate, the Democratic national convention 
met in Baltimore. The platform declared for both annexa- 
tion of Texas and insistence upon our claim to the whole of 
Oregon. It had been expected that Van Buren would again 
be nominated for President, and he had a majority on the 
first ballot, though far from the necessary two-thirds. He 
was known to be opposed to immediate Texan annexation, 
and his selection was therefore impossible. James K. Polk, 
of Tennessee, was nominated unanimously on the ninth 
ballot. The Whigs in their platform were silent on the 
Texas question, besides ignoring the subjects of the bank 
and internal improvements, and even referring to the tariff 
in only evasive terms. Their candidate, Clay, endeavored 
during the canvass to accommodate himself to various 
views concerning Texas, with the result that while many 
people were glad to credit him with " statesmanlike " inten- 
tions it was not clear how he would act if elected. It was 
generally understood, however, that the Whig policy was 
against war with Mexico. The election was decided by the 
vote of New York, which gave Polk a plurality of about 
5,000— -Clay's defeat being attributed to the action of the 
third party Abolitionists, who polled in that State 15,812 
votes for their Presidential nominee, James G. Birney. The 
Electoral vote of the nation Was, Polk, 170; Clay, 105. The 



46 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Democrats elected a majority in each branch of Congress. 

Following this decisive result there was no longer any 
question about Texas. Resistance in Congress to the 
Democratic program ceased to be of any avail, and when the 
Tyler administration went out of office (March 4, 1845) the 
annexation had been made an accomplished fact. The ex- 
pected war with Mexico ensued, terminating with the treaty 
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was proclaimed by President 
Polk on July 4, 1848, the United States acquiring all the 
huge territory westward from the Louisiana Purchase, with 
the Pacific coast from the south to the north line of Cali- 
fornia. Five years afterward the Gadsden Purchase, en- 
larging the southern bounds of Arizona and New Mexico, 
was added as the result of peaceful negotiation with Mexico 
by the Democratic administration of Pierce. 

As for Oregon, the aggressive attitude that had been ex- 
pressed in 1844 by the Democratic campaign cry of " Fifty- 
four forty or fight!" gave way to a more moderate disposi- 
tion under the responsibilities involved in the final treaty 
arrangements with England. The boundary was fixed at 
the forty-ninth parallel, in conformity to the irreducible 
claims of both countries. No dispassionate American writer 
has ever taken exception to that adjustment, except by way 
of regret that the Polk administration was debarred by the 
previous diplomatic course of our government from urging 
a claim to Vancouver Island. An admirable review of the 
whole dispute may be found in Clintpn A. Snowden's '' His- 
tory of Washington" (Century History Company, 1909). 

It was under Democratic initiative and action that the 
United States secured the entire portion of its territory ex- 
tending from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, as 
well as the valuable Florida cession. 

The Mexican War led directly and instantly to a revival 
of the political slavery question, which, as we have seen, 
had been originally settled by the Missouri Compromise of 
1820. That Compromise, based on the admission of Missouri 
as a slave State but the exclusion of slavery from ,all other 
western territory (as existing in 1820) north of 36 deg. 



MEXICAN WAR AND WILMOT PROVISO 47 

30 min., was of course inapplicable, except by new Congres- 
sional act, to the tremendous expanse added to the national 
possessions in the years 1845-48. Anti-slavery sentiment 
had greatly increased at the north, and was sternly opposed 
to any farther spread of the slave system ; while at the south 
there was an unalterable resolve not only to maintain the 
slavery institution, but to extend it into the new western 
regions so as to assure the erection of more slave States and 
pieserve the south's relative political strength in the Union. 
The south considered itself to have rightful opportunities 
and expectations of slavery development in the Union. But 
the great majority of the northern people refused to recog- 
nize any slavery rights except those that for necessary 
reasons could not be contradicted. It was not proposed to 
disturb or limit slavery in the States where it existed, but all 
the projects to extend it caused instant trouble. 

The reasons for absolute non-interference with slavery 
in the States where it then existed were constitutional. 
They could not possibly be overcome save by forcibly 
disrupting the Union, which none wanted to do except the 
extreme abolitionists of the Garrisonian school, who re- 
garded the Constitution as *' a covenant with death and an 
agreement with hell." As a matter of fact, when finally 
slavery was abolished in the southern States, the Union had 
already been disrupted by force, and the only question re- 
specting it was whether it could be restored by the same 
agency. 

Moreover, the most essential and precious guarantee of 
our whole political system, that of the exclusive and in- 
violable right of the several States to the control of their 
local affairs, so far as powers had not been expressly sur- 
rendered to the Federal government, required that the Fed- 
eral government should let slavery strictly alone in the 
States where it was an established institution. It was the 
separation of State rights and functions from national 
powers and pretensions, that alone had made democracy 
successful and ultimately given it such supremacy that any 
other institutional plan was unimaginable. Interference 



48 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

with slavery in the States that chose to have it was incom- 
patible with guaranteed State rights ; the matter was simply 
undebatable, except on the conjectural basis of a constitu- 
tional amendment nationally prohibiting or discriminating 
against slavery — and how could such an amendment, need- 
ing three-fourths of the States for its ratification, be pro- 
cured with half the States surely against it? 

But the positiveness and total irreconcilability of the con- 
flicting opinions and preferences on the fundamental ques- 
tion of slavery made it imperative to find a political solu- 
tion in relation to the future States at the west. Civil war 
was at that time not thought of; the idea was too mon- 
strous ; both sections were unanimously for the Union. The 
only solution was an agreement of some kind. Pending the 
official termination of the Mexican War there was much 
discussion in Congress, and various proposals were intro- 
duced. The only substantive results were the admission of 
Texas as a slave State (1845) and the organization of Ore- 
gon as a free Territory (1848). 

From the Congressional debate, however, there was 
evolved an exceedingly striking measure of policy, the Wil- 
mot Proviso, which, though abortive in the end, had a pro- 
found influence upon politics. This was a northern Demo- 
cratic measure in its origin, but received substantial sup- 
port also from the northern wing of the Whig party. Intro- 
duced in the House (1846) by David Wilmot, a Democratic 
member from Pennsylvania, it passed by 87 to 64 -and was 
many times reaffirmed by that body, but was defeated in the 
Senate. It was intended to be a joint resolution, authorized 
President Polk to initiate peace negotiations with Mexico, 
and added: 

*' Provided, That as an express and fundamental condi- 
tion to the acquisition of any territory from the republic of 
Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which 
may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the 
Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any 



MEXICAN WAR AND WILMOT PROVISO 49 

part of the said territory, except for crime, whereof the 
party shall be first duly convicted." 

The rival Presidential candidates in 1848 were Lewis 
Cass, of Michigan, Democrat, and General Zachary Taylor, 
of Louisiana, Whig. On the new slavery questions neither 
party had as yet a program of exact measures. Consistently 
with the indecisive results in Congress, party attitudes were 
still subject to deliberation, and every latitude was allowed 
to diverse views. 

In previous Democratic platforms the general principles 
had been laid down that the Federal government was "' one 
of limited powers, derived solely from the Constitution " ; 
that it was ** inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful 
constitutional powers " ; that Congress had '* no power 
under the Constitution to interfere with or control the do- 
mestic institutions of the several States " ; and that such 
States were " the sole and proper judges of everything per- 
taining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitu- 
tion." These declarations were now renewed, and their 
implications in relation to the slavery discussion were given 
increased significance by announcing that the party pro- 
posed to maintain, as a high and sacred duty, " a vigilant 
and constant adherence to those principles and compromises 
of the Constitution which are broad enough and strong 
enough to embrace and uphold the Union as it was, the 
Union as it is, and the Union as it shall be, in the full ex- 
pansion of the energies and capacity of this great and pro- 
gressive people." In other words, the Democratic party 
declared itself to be strictly, absolutely, and unconditionally 
a Union party; and though the sectional subject was not 
specified in that connection, everyone knew it was the sec- 
tional subject that was the occasion for the pronouncement. 

Besides deciding to leave the details of the slavery ques- 
tion to the future, the Democratic convention of 1848 de- 
clined to enter into condemnations of particular proposi- 
tions and party elements that were regarded with disfavor 
in certain quarters. It voted down a resolution that de- 
nounced the Wilmot Proviso as bad Democratic doctrine. 



50 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

and it also took an impartial course as between two contest- 
ing delegations from New York, one of which favored the 
Wilmot Proviso and the other opposed it — offering seats to 
both on equal terms. But neither of the factions was will- 
ing to accept such an arrangement, and New York was con- 
sequently unrepresented in the convention. The New York 
supporters of the Proviso — popularly known as Barn- 
burners because it was said they were like the wrathy 
Dutchman who burned his barn to exterminate the rats and 
mice that infested it — bolted the Democratic national 
ticket, and from that action resulted the call for the cele- 
brated Buffalo convention which established the Free 
Soil, or Free Democratic, party and nominated Van Buren 
as a separate Presidential candidate on a platform of in- 
tense and comprehensive antagonism to slavery. 

While the Democrats in 1848 were torn by factional dif- 
ferences, due to the bold maintenance of anti-slavery prin- 
ciples by an important part of their following, the Whigs 
were extremely, indeed minutely, careful to keep from even 
the appearance of being concerned about principles or dis- 
turbed by discordant elements of any kind. Their national 
convention adopted no platform. Although they had every 
hope of winning the election, they refused to do justice to 
their tried leader. Clay, denying him the nomination be- 
cause they thought it safer to have a perfectly colorless 
candidate, General Taylor. 

The Wilmot Proviso defeated the Democrats. In the 
pivotal State of New York their regular nominee, Cass, had 
only 114,318 votes; Van Buren, Free Democrat, had 120.- 
510; and Taylor, Whig, had 218,603. New York had up to 
that time been a reliably Democratic State. So had Penn- 
sylvania, which also went against Cass. Taylor carried 
seven northern and eight southern States, with a total 
Electoral vote of 163 ; Cass won in eight States of the north 
and seven of the south, and had 127 votes. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PARTY OF THE UNION 
1849-1857 

A GREAT event brought to an end the mere experi- 
mental discussion and inconclusive Congressional 
treatment of the various phases of the slavery question, and 
inaugurated those positive measures which, with the con- 
stantly increasing embitterment of feeling that they pro- 
duced, resulted in the Civil War. Gold was discovered in 
California in 1848, and that region of formerly sparse popu- 
lation and inconsequential development and enterprise was 
rapidly settled by as energetic and masterful a people as 
have ever wrought mighty and beneficent changes. In 
little more than a year California showed a sufficient num- 
ber of inhabitants to be indisputably entitled to admission 
as a State of the Union. Without resorting to the dignified 
and leisurely preliminary of Territorial organization under 
Federal auspices, the people, in October, 1849, held a con- 
vention which adopted a State Constitution. This Constitu- 
tion excluded slavery from the proposed State. It was 
popularly approved at a special election, the vote being 
12,066 to 811, and application was made to Congress for 
admission. 

At once it was seen that the granting of California's 
application would involve two startling consequences: 
First, it would give the north sixteen States as against the 
south's fifteen, and therefore destroy the balance of the sec- 
tions; and Second, it would make impossible the projec- 
tion of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, a pro- 
ceeding favored by many statesmen of that day, and 
strongly urged by the south, as an ideal solution of the sec- 
tional problem. Thus the proposed admission would en- 
hance the political power and prestige of the north and 
doubtless stimulate that section to seek still further gains 
against slavery. The south understood that the wish of 
California could not be denied consistently with demo- 
cratic principles, yet was in no mood to yield advantages to 

51 



52 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

the north without equivalents. The situation was full qi 
danger for the Union. Although thoroughly desiring to 
stay in the Union on equal terms for slavery, or at least 
terms guaranteeing the future security and influential posi- 
tion of the institution, the south unalterably preferred 
disunion to sacrifice or imperilment of its own political 
power and fundamental domestic system. 

The Compromise measures of 1850 were accordingly 
conceived, agreed to by the leaders of both political parties, 
and after long and strenuous debate passed by the two 
branches of Congress and signed by the Whig President, 
Millard Fillmore (formerly Vice-President, who had suc- 
ceeded to the chief magistracy upon the death of President 
Taylor, July 9, 1850). In brief, the Compromises provided 
as follows: i. Admission of California without slavery 
and without reduction or division of its territory. 2. Or- 
ganization of two new Territories, Utah and New Mexico, 
out of the remaining part of the domain ceded by Mexico; 
these Territories, and the States later rising from them, to 
have the right to establish or exclude slavery without inter- 
position by Congiess. 3. A more effective Fugitive Slave 
law, to be strictly enforced by the Federal officials and 
courts, and requiring all the inhabitants of every State and 
Territory to assist slaveowners in recovering their escaped 
negroes. 4. Addition of a large part of Texas to New 
Mexico upon payment of a money indemnity by the Fed- 
eral government to Texas. 5. Abolition of the slave trade 
in the District of Columbia, but no disturbance of the ex- 
isting status of that institution. 

The gains for the south of the Fugitive Slave law and 
the right to an equal chance for slavery in the new Terri- 
tories were regarded, so far as active anti-slavery opinion 
was concerned, as the commanding feature of the Compro- 
mises; and it was active anti-slavery opinion, incessantly 
opposing all gains for the south and insisting on Charles 
Sumner's dictum, ''Freedom national, slavery sectional," 
that was to dominate the political situation ultimately. 
But in 1850 the overmastering desire of the country was 



THE PARTY OF THE UNION 53 

for sectional harmony within and for the Union. Clay and 
Webster, the great leaders of the Whigs, were whole- 
heartedly for the Compromises, inclusive of the Fugitive 
Slave and Utah-New Mexico bills: — Clay was indeed the 
chief originator and foremost champion of the measures 
as a whole, and Webster, as the head of the cabinet, fully 
approved President Fillmore's signature of all the acts. 

Nevertheless, the Whi'g party, by its vacillating, timid, 
and scrupulously expedient course had become a very un- 
certain factor; the only unquestionable thing about it was 
its relative weakness with the people. It had never really 
led the country, and all the successive events demonstrated 
that it never could. The Compromises were accepted by 
the general public, north and south, as settling the slavery 
controversy, and a consistent policy and administration 
for the future were therefore expected. The preservation of 
the Union was believed to be assured by the accommoda- 
tions that had been made, provided there should be no re- 
opening of the slavery question in a manner to provoke 
secessionist action at the south; and as the Democratic 
party had the complete confidence of the country for its 
representative position and effective strength in support 
of the Union, its triumph over the Whigs at the Presidential 
election of 1852 was so great as to resemble its early suc- 
cesses against the Federalists. 

Yet the official attitude of the Whigs on slavery in the 
1852 campaign was wholly identical with that of the Demo- 
crats. Both parties declared unqualifiedly for the Com- 
promises as affording a final settlement of the controversy^ 
and against all attempts to revive sectional differences; 
and the Whig platform added : *' We will maintain the 
system (of the settlement) as essential to the nationality 
of the Whig party and the integrity of the Union." The 
people, however, as had always been the case save under 
certain peculiar temporary conditions, were much more 
strongly inclined toward the Democrats than the Whigs 
on the principal issues of government. Franklin Pierce, of 
New Hampshire, the Dernocratic candidate, received 254 



54 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Electoral votes, against 42 for the Whig nominee, General 
Winfield Scott, of New Jersey. The only States carried 
by Scott were Kentucky, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and 
Vermont — two northern and two southern. The Demo- 
crats retained the Senate by a very large majority and 
elected more than two-thirds of the members of the House 
of Representatives. 

This result was not a sectional victory in any sense. The 
sectional question, on account of the absolute Unionism of 
both the great parties, "was not at issue. It was a victory, 
of overwhelming proportions, for the Democratic party, 
after calm and fair consideration by the country of the 
relative merits of the rival organizations in view of the 
lack of any difference between them on the sectional ques- 
tion. The Free Democratic, or Free Soil, party declined 
greatly in strength. Its candidate, John P. Hale, of New 
Hampshire, received in the nation only 156,149 votes, as 
against 291,263 cast for Van Buren in 1848. If there had 
been a marked sectional spirit popularly, the Free Soilers 
would have benefited, as they were the only political sec- 
tionalists of that time. 

The outstanding event of Pierce's administration (1853- 
57) was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in the early 
part of 1854. This measure was introduced and cham- 
pioned by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and 
was supported by the administration Democrats and the 
conservative Whigs. It was maintained that as the Com- 
promise legislation of 1850 had given the south an equal 
chance for slavery in the Territories of New Mexico and 
Utah, a new national principle governing the question of 
slavery in the Territories had consequently been estab- 
lished — the principle of " popular sovereignty," or decision 
by vote of the people concerned; and that the same prin- 
ciple should be applied to the still unorganized portion of 
the old Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30^ — an extensive 
country lying west of Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, and 
stretching to the crest of the Rocky Mountains. It had 
become of urgent importance to extinguish the Indian titles 



THE PARTY OF THE UNION 55 

and erect Territories in the Louisiana Purchase, not only 
as a matter of satisfaction to American settlers who wished 
the lands, but also for the security and advantage of the 
many emigrants crossing the plains to California and 
Oregon, who were entitled to the protection of organized 
government and the benefit of civilized settlement along 
their routes of travel. 

An effort had been made at the Congressional session of 
1852-53 (before the coming in of the Pierce administration) 
to institute a new Territory west of Missouri under the 
anti-slavery guarantee of the Missouri Compromise, but 
it had failed because of southern opposition in the Senate. 
The establishment of such a Territory could not be de- 
layed, and it was certain the south would agree to its 
organization if the ban against slavery should be lifted. 
Altogether, the arguments for the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise seemed convincing to Douglas, and the great 
influence that he exercised, combined with the active favor 
of the south, carried the repeal measure through. The bill 
provided for creating two new Territories, Kansas and 
Nebraska, and was therefore known as the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill. 

Strong opposition to the policy thus entered upon was 
at once developed at the north, and the issue was taken 
into all the State and Congressional elections of 1854. The 
movement resulted in the inception and organization of the 
Republican party, although for Stome time the opponents 
of the act were slow to assume the name of Republicans, 
preferring to be called anti-Nebraskans. There was as 
yet no concerted plan of the diverse elements represented 
to combine themselves into a compact new party. The 
political situation just at that time was vastly complicated 
by the appearance of the Know-Nothing, or so-styled 
** American " party, on a program of comprehensive antag- 
onism to the foreign-born elements of the population and 
to the Catholic church. This organization had not as yet 
formally entered the political field; and as it operated on 
the basis of a strictly secret '' order " it remained an un- 



56 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

certain quantity throughout the upheaval that immediately 
followed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act. At the 
fall elections of 1854 the Know-Nothings polled a formid- 
able vote, carrying several States and electing a large 
number of members of Congress. Meantime the Whig 
party, while here and there making a valorous fight for 
life, fell into a state of general collapse that presaged its 
early end. It did not have the votes to maintain an effec- 
tive existence for itself after parting wth its many mem- 
bers who decided to join, variously, the Republican or other 
Anti-Nebraska aggregations or the Know-Nothing move- 
ment. 

Into this confused condition of politics simplicity was 
gradually introduced as the result of the overshadowing 
interest in the great Kansas issue and the practical develop- 
ments arising from it. The south was determined to secure 
Kansas for slavery, and northern sentiment was grimly 
resolved to not permit that outcome. A decision could be 
reached only by the weight of popular preference in Kansas 
itself after settlement had advanced sufficiently .to admit 
of conclusive action by vote. For there was no possible 
question, in the existing political circumstances, of re- 
pealing the Kansas-Nebraska act or of summarily award- 
ing Kansas to one side or the other by national interven- 
tion of any kind. Southern and northern emigrants con- 
sequently thronged to Kansas, and with them, of course, 
went interested politicians and agitators who stoutly main- 
tained the claims of their respective sides and were ready 
at all times to seek and seize every advantage. The south- 
ern partisans were mostly from the adjacent State of Mis- 
souri, and, as rough frontiersmen who had thoroughly con- 
vinced themselves that they had a superior right to the 
Kansas soil, they did not hesitate to take high-handed 
measures. Neither did the northern settlers, for that mat- 
ter, after duly experiencing the difficulties and dangers of 
the proposition before them. The natural results were pre- 
mature and one-sided elections, rival governments, armed 
conflicts (the celebrated ''Border Ruffian" wars), neigh- 



THE PARTY OF THE UNION 57 

borhood feuds, murders both unprovoked and retaliatory, 
and villainies of all varieties. 

It should be always borne in mind that the Kansas issue 
and situation originated from the irreconcilable nature of 
the opposed views of the sections on the slavery question, 
which had never been a party question and which the 
Democratic party, as the responsible party of the Union, 
passionately desired should not be. On this point the most 
distinguished northern historians — notably that preeminent 
authority concerning the period in question, James F. 
Rhodes — have done justice to the Democratic party. The 
south and north equally made the issue^ — the south's con- 
tribution being its insistence upon a position of political 
equality in the Union, and the north's its refusal to concede 
national equality to slavery. Suppose the Missouri Com- 
promise had not been repealed — what then? Would the 
south, have then consented to the opening of a new free 
Territory in the Louisiana Purchase without the compen- 
satory arrangement of a new slave Territory somewhere 
else? Certainly not. Moreover, and this is a still more 
interesting point, if the south had been debarred from a 
chance in Kansas, would it not have elected to adhere to its 
favorite project, at that time ready for execution, of annex- 
ing Cuba? It is the opinion of many historical students 
that the move to annex Cuba after an indispensable war 
with Spain in that connection, was stopped only by the 
concession to the south of the Missouri Compromise repeal. 

In the clear light of history it is easy to see that the 
repeal was nevertheless a great mistake, especially so on 
expedient grounds, and most particularly on the ground 
of the interest of non-sectionalism, which the Democratic 
party had earnestly at heart. It was an experiment which 
appeared logical, but of which the consequences could not 
be foreseen, any more than the results to flow from the 
formation of the sectional Republican party could be pre- 
dicted by even the most sagacious participants in that 
epochal enterprise. 

The House of Representatives of the Thirty-fourth Con- 



58 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

gress (1855-56) was organized by the Republicans, Na- 
thaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, being elected Speaker. 
A consolidation of all the Anti-Nebraska members was 
necessary to accomplish the result after unsuccessful bal- 
loting for two months. Not a single southern vote was 
given to Banks. Thus in its first national success the 
Republican party took on the sectional character that has 
always distinguished it. 

At their first national nominating convention, held in 
Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, the Republicans selected as 
their candidates two northern men — John C. Fremont, of 
California, for President, and William L. Dayton, of New 
Jersey, for Vice-President. Their platform was mainly a 
presentation of the issue of non-extension of slavery as 
related to the Territories, and the immediate admission of 
Kansas as a free State was demanded. One of the resolu- 
tions asserted it to be '' both the right and the duty of 
Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of 
barbarism, polygamy and slavery " ; and there were other 
references to slavery which signified condemnation of it as 
a system. Disunionism, however, was utterly and of course 
with the greatest sincerity opposed, the declaration being 
made that "the Federal Constitution, the rights .of the 
States, and union of the States shall be preserved " ; and 
the extreme anti-slavery proposals that previously had 
been urged by the Free Soil and Abolition parties were 
disregarded on account of the practical considerations 
against them. 

Yet under the conditions that then existed a tendency 
of disunion was marked out for the Republican party as 
inseparable from the nature of its organization and policy. 
Political sectionalism meant disunionism. It was so con- 
strued to mean by all the opponents of the Republicans 
in the canvass — the Democrats, the conservative Whigs, 
and the Know-Nothings. " The Union in danger " was a 
warning continually heard. Rufus Choate, the distin- 
guished lawyer, wrote that the first duty was *' to unite and 
dissolve the new geographical party calling itself Repub- 



THE PARTY OF THE UNION 59 

lican, to prevent the madness of the times from working 
its maddest act — the very ecstasy of its madness, — the 
permanent formation and the actual present triumph of a 
party which knows one-half^ of America only to hate and 
dread it. . . . The triumph of such a party puts the 
Union in danger." And Mr. Choate prophetically added: 
" If the Republican party accomplishes its objects and gives 
the government to the north I turn my eyes from the 
consequences. To the fifteen States of the south that gov- 
ernment will appear an alien government. It will appear 
worse. It will appear a hostile government." 

We shall not dwell on this subject; our sole purpose in 
discussing it is to dispassionately, and in as brief words as 
possible, present the historical facts and the opposed points 
of view of those distressed times. There was a divided 
responsibility for the rupture of the Union, and neither the 
Democratic nor the Republican party knew or could esti- 
mate the actual bearings or consequences of its attitude. 
The responsibility of the sectional Republicans for the 
ultimate result was positive, so was that of the sectional 
south ; while the Democratic responsibility was purely inci- 
dental and negative. In the case of the Republicans the 
fact of positive responsibility is not changed by saying that 
their party zeal prevented them from taking the menace of 
secession seriously — that indeed they were wholly of the 
opinion, as expressed by one of their chief leaders, Henry 
Wilson, that the southerners could not be kicked out of the 
Union; for a great party is as directly to be charged with 
responsibility for its misconceptions and miscalculations 
as it is to be credited for its wise or fortunate judgments 
and acts. On the other hand, the Democrats had no zeal of 
party for any sectional principle or course; their zeal was 
altogether for the Union ; and their connection with the 
eventuality of disunion was solely that of physical inability 
to control the powerful and irreconcilable forces operating 
for the Union's inevitable destruction. 

Regarding this matter of responsibility there remains 
the question of right and wrong on the slavery issue. That 



6o THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

question, on moral grounds, admits of no argument; and 
on practical grounds it has long since, and everlastingly, 
been settled. At the period referred to it was, for the 
north, morally just as easy a question as it is now. The 
north, having no slaves, could with perfect convenience 
take the one impregnable moral position — that the pre- 
tended right of any man to have a slave was simply un- 
thinkable. But the south had slaves, hundreds of thousands 
of them, inherited from past generations, multiplying by 
natural increase, constituting the entire foundation of her 
economic and social structure. It was impossible for the 
south to even consider the proposal of emancipation — and 
there was no alternative proposal save that of retention of 
slavery that was practical. And to what substantial use 
would be the noble altruism of liberation? To this question, 
however attentively considered, there had been no answer, 
and none seemed possible. Henry Clay, residing in Ken- 
tucky, was a slaveowner. A man of more lofty, humane, 
and generous character never lived. Addressing a political 
meeting at Richmond, Indiana, during his 1844 campaign, 
he was interrupted by a Quaker, a Mr. Mendenhall, who 
asked him why he did not free his slaves. Mr. Clay replied 
that he had about fifty of them. Some were old and in- 
firm, others infants — should he abandon them to the cold 
charities of the world? Others would not leave him — 
should he drive them away? He estimated his slaves to 
be worth $15,000. If he would agree to lose that sum by 
liberating them, would Mendenhall and his friends agree 
to provide for them to the amount of $15,000 after they had 
been given their freedom? 

Hence the question of right and wrong had more than one 
side in practice. And no one at the north had any definite 
program for helping the south to a solution. 

But as regarded by northern sentiment, slavery was in- 
tolerable. That was sufficient. The question of responsi- 
bility and consequences involved in the Republican sec- 
tional attitude became insignificant when slavery reached 
out to northern soil, as it was doing under the Fugitive 



THE PARTY OF THE UNION 6i 

Slave and Kansas-Nebraska laws. Such, stated with per- 
fect dispassionateness, was the true Republican position. 
The Democratic position was, that the Union was all 
important. 

In its platform of 1856 the Democratic party announced 
that, ** claiming fellowship with and desiring the coopera- 
tion of all who regard the preservation of the Union under 
the Constitution as the paramount issue," it repudiated 
'' all sectional parties and platforms concerning domestic 
slavery which seek to embroil the States and incite to 
treason and armed resistance to law in the Territories, and 
whose avowed purposes, If consummated, must end in civil 
war and disunion." James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, 
and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, were nominated 
for President and Vice-President. 

The Know-Nothings nominated former President Mil- 
lard Fillmore, of New York, and Andrew J. Donelson, of 
Tennessee, on a platform asserting their special ideas and 
adhering to conservative views on the slavery question. An. 
anti-slavery faction of the Know-Nothings sought to effect 
a fusion with the Republicans, but its offer was declined, 
although no condemnation of Know-Nothingism was em- 
bodied in the Republican platform. The Democrats, how- 
ever, adopted a very strong plank in opposition to the 
Know-Nothing demands for discriminations against the 
foreign-born and Catholics. 

A national convention was held by the Whigs, which 
endorsed the JCnow-Nothing nominees. 

Buchanan won, receiving 174 Electoral votes to 114 for 
Fremont and 8 for Fillmore. In the whole south the Re- 
publican popular vote was only 1,194. Buchanan carried 
fourteen southern and five northern States, Fremont eleven 
northern States, and Fillmore one southern State, 
Maryland. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 

1857-1860 

THE immediate events that brought on the Civil War 
were the natural developments of the irreconcilable 
political positions and sectional antagonisms which have 
been briefly reviewed in the last chapter. Probably the 
chiefest of these events, in the respect of intensifying feel- 
ings, was the decision in the Dred Scott case by the United 
States Supreme Court (March 6, 1857), declaring that Con- 
gress had no constitutional power to prohibit slavery in the 
Territories, and also practically affirming slavery to be a 
legitimate institution on fundamental grounds. Thus all 
for which the south had contended on the broad basis of 
asserted right was made the law of the land. It was 
impossible that the south could thenceforth fail to insist 
upon results to its own advantage; and equally it was im- 
possible that northern anti-slavery sentiment could fail 
to increasingly seek the power of unhampered political 
action — a power transcending every other, and therefore 
able to find ways for effectively dealing with slavery in 
spite of technical difficulties on certain points. 

Another outstanding development was the contest over 
the celebrated pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution of Kan- 
sas, an instrument which, from the circumstances of its 
inception and subsequent submission to the people of the 
Territory (1857), had excited the bitter opposition of the 
free State party. President Buchanan regarded the • 
Lecompton Constitution as the result of competent action 
taken under due legal authority ; but many of the northern 
Democrats, headed by Douglas, condemned and repudiated 
it because they believed it was not representative of the 
popular will. The controversy was with reference to the 
admission of Kansas on the basis of this Constitution. At 
the national election of 1856 the Democrats had recovered 
control of the House of Representatives, besides retaining 
the Senate; they consequently had the power to enact the 
Lecompton bill and admit Kansas as a slave State. Douglas 

62 



THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 63 

and his followers, however, prevented that consummation. 
A compromise measure, the English bill (introduced by 
William H. English, an ahti-Lecompton Democratic mem- 
ber of the House from Indiana, who afterward, 1880, ran 
on the Democratic ticket for Vice-President), was passed 
and signed by the President (1858), which directed that 
the Lecompton Constitution be resubmitted to the Kansas 
voters, together with certain propositions concerning the 
public lands. The Kansans thereupon rejected the pro- 
posed Constitution by a majority of ten thousand. And so 
the final decision against slavery in Kansas was reached 
under a Congressional act of Democratic origin and Demo- 
cratic administrative approval. It is true the measure em- 
bodied details unacceptable to Republican leaders; but it 
brought the main issue before the people of Kansas in a 
manner creating a situation practically very different from 
that upon which the pro-slavery partisans had previously 
taken their stand. 

With Kansas irrevocably lost to the south, the whole 
idea of popular sovereignty as a practical device for im- 
planting slavery at the west was seen to be a delusion. It 
is indeed strange that the south could ever have seriously 
expected to be able to outvote the anti-slavery people on a 
great competitive effort in the Territories; and stranger 
still is it that the southern leaders could have taken the 
position of resting their case for the future upon the out- 
come in the single Territory of Kansas. In its last reduc- 
tion the question of the political control of Kansas was a 
question of establishing on the soil the major number of 
settlers ; and for economic reasons the unencumbered north- 
erners were certain to outdo the slave-ridden southerners 
in the settlement contest. According to the historian 
Rhodes, there was at no time in Kansas a slave population 
of more than three hundred — this notwithstanding the 
proximity of the slave States of Missouri and Arkansas. 
Pro-slavery sympathizers of course went in Jarge numbers ; 
but the successful competitive taking up of Kansas lands 
for either immediate or future cultivation by slave labor 



64 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

was not a practical matter in the emergent case made by 
the inrush of homeseekers from the north. 

And even if the south had won Kansas previously to 
1858 the desired balance of the States, sixteen to sixteen, 
would have obtained only temporarily. For in 1858 Minne- 
sota v/as admitted as a free State, and in 1859 Oregon, also 
free, was admitted. It is worthy of remark that both these 
admissions, giving the north eighteen States to the south's 
fifteen, occurred during the Democratic administration of 
Buchanan, when the sectional situation had reached its 
most critical stage. As both Minnesota and Oregon were 
deemed to have sufficient population, as their inhabitants 
unanimously desired admission, and as there were no com- 
plicating conditions locally on the subject of slavery, the 
national government welcomed them to statehood notwith- 
standing the aggravated political position as between the 
sections and the consequent rnenace to the Democratic 
party. 

The uselessness of any further struggle for slavery ex- 
tension by the means of popular vote in the Territories 
had at last become perfectly plain. Yet there remained 
the facts of slavery's right to enter the Territories under 
the Supreme Court decision, the south's determination to 
yield nothing, and the certainty of a crisis in the event that 
the Republican party should come into full control nation- 
ally. Thus the fateful issue was made up for the campaign 
of i860. Meantime there was^an unmistakable growth in 
Republican strength. The elections of 1858 gave the 
Republicans a plurality over the Democrats in the House 
of Representatives, v/ith the Know-Nothings holding the 
balance ; and when the new House organized a Republican, 
William Pennington, of New Jersey, was chosen Speaker. 
This was the period of the rise of Abraham Lincoln to a 
conspicuous position in the national political field as the 
result of his debates with Douglas in Illinois in 1858, fol- 
lowed by his remarkable address in Cooper Institute, New 
York City, on February 27, i860. Thoughtful people began 
to realize that there could be but one logical conclusion to 



THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 65 

Republican success — that of progressive and in the end 
decisive action regardless of southern opposition and of the 
necessary consequences, along the line of Lincoln's declara- 
tion made at Springfield, Illinois, June 17, 1858, '' This 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free " ; a declaration paraphrased by William H. Seward in 
his '' Irrepressible Conflict " speech delivered at Rochester, 
New York, October 25, 1858. 

Officially, however, it was no part of announced Republi- 
can policy to take overt measures for putting an end to the 
half-slave status of the Union. Lincoln expressly disa- 
vowed any such radical design, saying in his Cooper In- 
stitute address that he did not mean to assert that the 
power of emancipation was possessed by the Federal gov- 
ernment, and adding, '' As to the power of emancipation, I 
speak of the slaveholding States only. . . . Wrong as 
we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where 
it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising 
from its actual presence in the nation." He gave it as his 
understanding and conviction that the issue as to a Union 
either all slave or all free was wholly made by the ag- 
gressive and uncompromising attitude of the south; that 
the south would ultimately be satisfied with nothing short 
of abolition of all the free State Constitutions, so that 
slavery could become national; and therefore that the 
responsibility for sectionalism, for the Republican party's 
position, and for the apprehended eventualities was alto- 
gether upon the south. 

But this view was hotly resented by the south and 
totally rejected by the more conservative northern people, 
especially the Democratic leaders who maintained above 
all things the practicability of a peaceable and harmonious 
final arrangement. In the historic Lincoln-Douglas debate 
at Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858, Lincoln propounded 
to his antagonist several categorical questions, one of which 
was : " If the Supreme Court of the United States shall 
decide that S^a^es cannot exclude slavery from their limits, 
are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following 



66 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

such decision as a rule of political- conduct?" Douglas 
with great warmth answered that he considered the inter- 
rogatory amazing ; that there was " not one man, woman, or 
child south of the Potomac, in any slave State, who did not 
repudiate any such pretension " ; and that the suggested 
Supreme Court decision, infringing upon State rights, 
would simply be a patent violation of the Federal Con- 
stitution. '' Such a thing," he exclaimed, " is not possible. 
It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the 
bench could ever descend to." With equal intensity Doug- 
las might have added that in the surmised case no northern 
Democrat of any influence would for a moment have tol- 
erated the intrusion of slavery into the free States in con- 
tempt of the established and unanimous local public senti- 
ment against that institution, and he might with great 
pertinence have reminded Mr. Lincoln of the sincerity, re- 
liability, and enormous power and value of the northern 
Democracy as a factor for maintaining the integrity of the 
anti-slavery position of every northern State and moreover 
every Territory. Throughout all the exciting events in- 
cidental to the formation of the new commonwealths west 
of the Mississippi, the northern Democrats who had become 
settlers in them had not only been active participants on 
behalf of freedom, but had usually formed the predominat- 
ing element of the electorate. California had up to 1858 
been uniformly Democratic. Iowa, Oregon, and Minnesota 
had begun their careers with Democratic popular majori- 
ties. Even among the free settlers of Kansas the sup- 
porters of the Democratic party originally t)utnumbered 
every other political element; at the noted free State Con- 
stitutional convention held in Topeka in October, 1855, the 
roll of delegates showed that 19 were Democrats, 6 Whigs, 
and 9 Independents, Free Soilers, and Republicans. 

Lincoln's doctrine of the impossibility of the govern- 
ment's permanent endurance half slave and half free was 
perfectly expressive, however, of the sentimental conviction 
of an undoubted majority of the northern people that the 
country's destiny was bound up in the cause of resistance 



THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 67 

to slavery — resistance to such an extent and such a con- 
clusion, at least, as to fully satisfy his demand that *' the 
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief 
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. ^ ' This was 
a far different matter than the declared necessity of safe- 
guarding the no-slavery system and rights of the northern 
States against the alleged menace of southern aggression. 
There was in fact no incertitude in the public mind, 
especially at the south, respecting the subsequent steps 
likely to be taken after slavery should be successfully placed 
and held in the positively restricted -position desired by 
Lincoln. Every important Republican leader disclaimed 
any intention of prescribing limitations for the final pro- 
gram of the party. This significantly non-committal atti- 
tude was stated as follows by Seward in his Rochester 
speech : '' One class say that they cannot trust the Re- 
publican party, that it has not avowed its hostility to slav- 
ery boldly enough or its affection for freedom earnestly 
enough. . . . Others cannot support the Republican 
party because it has not suffciently exposed its platform 
and determined what it will do, and what it will not do, 
when triumphant. It may prove too progressive for some, 
and too conservative for others. As if any party ever 
foresaw so clearly the course of events as to plan a universal 
scheme for future action, adapted to all possible emergen- 
cies. ... I know, and you know, that a revolution has 
begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions 
never go backward." 

The national party conventions of i860 were confronted 
with the tremendous responsibility of dealing with the sec- 
tional problem in terms of finality. It was impossible that 
the uncertainty could continue through another Presiden- 
tial administration. The commanding feature of the situ- 
ation was the south's demand that the country should ac- 
cept unequivocally the dogma that the Constitution of its 
own force carried slavery into the Territories, and hence 
that slaveowners were fully entitled to locate with their 



.A. 



68 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

*' property " in any Territory without having their rights 
impaired by either Congressional or Territorial legislation, 
and that it was the duty of the Federal government to afford 
them ample protection accordingly. In that demand the 
northern Democrats refused to concur, asserting that there 
were differences of opinion in the party *' as to the nature 
and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and 
as to the powers and duties of Congress, under the Con- 
stitution of the United States, over the institution of slav- 
ery within the Territories," and that the whole subject was 
one of constitutional law for the decision of the Supreme 
Court. These conflicting views dividing the southern and 
northern Democracy represented, on the one hand, the 
interest of the south in maintaining to the utmost the right 
of slavery, and, on the other, the firm adherence of the 
northern Democrats to constitutional principles and pro- 
cesses without presumptions either for or against slavery 
claims. 

It was inevitable that the south would stand by its in- 
terest. At the Democratic national convention which 
assembled in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23, i860, 
resolutions were adopted (April 30) in accord with the 
position of the northern wing of the party as above stated. 
Many of the southern delegates then withdrew. The con- 
vention proceeded to the nomination of a candidate for 
President, but after fifty-seven ballots was unable to make 
a choice under the two-thirds rule, and on May 3 adjourned 
to meet again in Baltimore June 18. After it reassembled 
there was another split. The regular convention nom- 
inated Douglas for President and Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of 
Alabama, for Vice-President ; the latter declined, and 
Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, was named in his place by 
the national committee. A separate convention was held 
by the bolters (Baltimore, June 28), which nominated John 
C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon 
—candidates who were promptly endorsed by the original 
Charleston seceders in their adjourned convention held in 
Richmond, Virginia 



THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 69 

The differences in the Democratic party thus resulting 
were neither composed nor in any manner moderated 
during the campaign. No man in the country knew better 
than Douglas the terrible earnestness of the southern lead- 
ers on the slavery issue or understood more clearly the 
imminence by the Union's dissolution in the now expected 
event of the election of a Republican President. Though in 
former Presidential years ambitious for the honor of his 
party's nomination, he had on this occasion regarded the 
prospect of his elevation with entire diffidence, caring only 
for the maintenance by the platform of a middle course con- 
cerning slavery — a course which, he was perfectly con- 
vinced, would, if sustained by the people, appeal in the 
end to the practical judgment of the southerners and so 
save the Union. He had the support of the immense ma- 
jority of the northern Democracy and some following in 
the southern States, but unfortunately for his cause had 
incurred the strong disfavor of the Buchanan administra- 
tion. President Buchanan never forgave him for his action 
on the Lecompton question, and disapproved his divergence 
from the views of the southerners on the issue of i860. 
The President had been brought up in and always had 
adhered to the early school of extreme conservatism, was 
punctilious respecting his authority as the head of the 
party, and, in addition to his great temperamental rigidity, 
had the fixity of mental habit and predilection that usually 
attends advanced age and a life-long austerity of charac- 
ter. The whole influence of the administration was exerted 
in the interest of the southern candidate, Breckinridge. 
The south, on its part, continued uncompromising in its 
rejection of Douglas as the party spokesman. His popular 
sovereignty plan had not worked for its advantage, and his 
constant allusion to the" institution of slavery as rightly 
subject to popular action was reptignant to southern feel- 
ing. The south also resented his frank declaration that 
*' unfriendly legislation " could properly be brought to bear 
against slavery in the Territories whenever the people 
locally should object to its presence among them. 



1^1. 



70 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

The Republican national convention of i860 (Chicago, 
May 16-18) nominated Lincoln for President and Hannibal 
Hamlin, of Maine, for Vice-President, and in its platform 
repeated the declarations on the slavery question adopted 
by the party in 1856, with several additional expressions 
condemning the Democratic party, and particularly the 
national administration, in very severe language. The 
undiscriminating accusation was made that Democratic 
members of Congress had often uttered or countenanced 
threats of disunion '* without rebuke and with applause 
from their political associates " ; this charge being mani- 
festly intended to cultivate the impression that the Democ- 
racy in its responsible capacity (including the intensely 
and exclusively Unionist northern Democracy) was dis- 
posed to be indifferent, if not opposed, to the Union's 
continuance ! Use was made of the word '' sectional," as 
if the south alone, and by no means the Republican party, 
was sectional. (It may be noted as one of the most in- 
teresting facts in the history of politics that the Republican 
party, without the hope of a single southern Electoral vote 
at that day or the present, has throughout its career been 
excessively sensitive on the sectional topic and meticulously 
denunciatory of all sectionalism.) There was a plank ad- 
verting to '' the recent reopening of the African slave 
trade." No such reopening had occurred under affirma- 
tive or consenting action by the government, and the Re- 
publican party and every informed person knew none 
could occur because no administration or party would ever 
take the responsibility. There had been certain incidents 
showing that the damnable trade was still being carried on 
by piratical villains for the sake of profit, and that southern 
sentiment was opposed to enforcement of the laws against 
it. But no party issue could be justly made on the subject 
as against the northern Democracy. Douglas had declared 
his unalterable opposition to the trade. During the canvass 
he wrote: ** I am irreconcilably opposed to the revival oi 
the African slave trade in any form and under any circum- 
stances." 



THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 71 

It was still deemed important by the Republicans to ob« 
serve discretion on certain points so as to do no injury to 
the prospects of party success. So far as the election 
chances in the fifteen southern States^ were concerned, it 
would of course be immaterial how '' sufficiently " (to use 
Seward's expression) the party '' exposed its platform " ; 
for the vote of every one of those States was already lost. 
But the Republicans well knew that independently thinking 
people of the north cherished deep in their hearts the 
sentiment of national harmony, and that while they were 
thoroughly in sympathy with the cause of non-ex:tension of 
slavery a generally provocative attitude toward the fiery 
southerners would not appeal to them. The warning 
voiced by the Democratic national platform of 1856 against 
** civil war and disunion " was not taken seriously by active 
partisan Republicans in the respect of suggesting obliga- 
tions of actual concession on their part; but it had great 
weight with conservative voters, and moderation for dis- 
cretionary reasons was therefore a Republican necessity. 

The Chicago platform practically advocated nothing more 
on the slavery subject than preservation of the territorial 
status quo, confinement of slavery to the southern States 
as a '' local interest," admission of Kansas as a free State, 
and the country's rejection of all the pretensions of slavery 
to an established footing in the Territories. The platform 
embodied several expressions and references of a general 
character designed to encourge the more positive anti-slav- 
ery people ; but on a number of particular matters deemed 
very important at that period it showed great caution so as 
not to repel the conservatives. John Brown's raid of 
October, 1859, was condemned by the declaration that 
"we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the 
soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pre- 
text, as among the gravest of crimes." There was no de- 
mand for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law, no approval 



^ Before the Civil War " the south " was understood to consist of all the 
slave States, including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in addition 
to the eleven States of the subsequent Confederacy. West Virginia had not 
as yet been detached from Virginia. 



72 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

of the *' Personal Liberty " measures that had been en- 
acted in northern States to make difficult the recovery of 
escaped slaves, and no objection to the proposed acquisi- 
tion of Cuba. Those were matters that had long been be- 
fore the country. It was not because of reluctance to 
further antagonize the south that the Republican party re- 
frained from taking a position concerning them. It was 
because of the political inexpediency of intensifying the 
already strong belief among northern voters that the south 
could be antagonized too far. 

Northern Democrats have never denied that their or- 
ganization was controlled in i860 by expediency for the 
sake of the Union. It is a historical fact that the Republican 
organization also was expedient — expedient, however, for d 
different desideratum, that of judiciously limiting the " ex- 
posure " of its platform. 

In addition to the Douglas Democracy, the Breckinridge 
Democracy, and the Republican party, there was a consoli- 
dation of the old-line Whigs and the conservative Know- 
Nothings under the name of the Constitutional Union party. 
This organization was improvised by a convention held in 
Baltimore May 9, which adopted a brief declaration disap- 
proving " geographical and sectional parties " and assert- 
ing that it was *' both the part of patriotism and of duty 
to recognize no political principle other than the Constitu- 
tion of the country, the Union of the States, and the en- 
forcement of the laws," and which nominated for President 
John Bell, of Tennessee, and for Vice-President Edward 
Everett, of Massachusetts. 

The contest was hopeless for both branches of the 
Democracy, as well as for the Constitutional Unionists, ex- 
cept upon the chance that enough northern votes could be 
carried against the Republicans to prevent a decision by the 
Electoral College and accordingly throw the result into 
the House of Representatives — in which eventuality the 
party differences represented by the opposed candidacies 
of Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell would still exist and 
render it very doubtful whether a successful combination of 



THE ISSUES AND ELECTION OF i860 73 

States could be effected against Lincoln. Therefore the 
Republicans alone occupied a confident position in the 
campaign. Yet Douglas waged a most aggressive fight, 
which he carried into the south. Everywhere he main- 
tained the supremacy and inviolability of the Union as the 
true Democratic doctrine. At one of his meetings he was 
asked: *' If the southern States secede from the Union 
upon the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, before he com- 
mits an overt act against their constitutional rights, will 
you advise or vindicate resistance by force to their seces- 
sion?" Douglas replied: "I answer emphatically that 
it is the duty of the President of the United States, and all 
others in authority under him, to enforce the laws of the 
United States as passed by Congress and as the courts ex- 
pound them. And I, as in duty bound by my oath of 
fidelity to the Constitution, would do all in my power to 
aid the government of the United States in maintaining the 
supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them, come 
from what quarter it might. In other words, I think the 
President of the United States, whoever he may be, should 
treat all attempts to break up the Union by resistance to 
its laws as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers of 1832." 

The result of the Presidential election was as follows: 
Electoral vote^^ — Lincoln, 180 (all the votes of the free 
States, except 3 in New Jersey) ; Douglas, 12 (9 in Missouri 
and 3 in New Jersey) ; Breckinridge, 72 (all the votes of the 
eleven slave States of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Flori- 
da, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, and Texas) ; Bell, 39 (the votes of the 
slave States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia). Popu- 
lar vote — Lincoln, 1,866,352; Douglas, 1,375,157; Breckin- 
ridge, 847,514; Bell, 587330. 

In the fourteen slave States that chose their Electors by 
popular vote (South Carolina still held to the practice of 
choice by the Legislature), Lincoln had 26,430, Douglas 
163,525, Breckinridge 570,686, and Bell 515,923 — the com- 
bined vote of Bell and Douglas being 679,448, or 108,762 
more than the Breckinridge vote, a fact of peculiar interest. 



74 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

On the paramount issue of the Union as against the policy 
of exclusive southern sectionalism maintained by tlte Breck- 
inridge men there was an undoubted affinity between the 
Douglas and Bell followers, who proved themselves to be in 
a considerable majority in the south itself. The inference is 
plain that up to the election the south was far from agreed — 
to state the case moderately — upon a disposition of hostility 
to the Union. It was made measurably united by the na- 
tional victory of the Republican party. 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 

1860-1865 

AFTER the Presidential election (November 6, i860) a 
period of four months was to elapse before the change 
of administration. South Carolina took the lead in the 
southern secession movement, withdrawing from the Union 
on December 20, and was followed in January by Mississippi 
(gth), Florida (loth), Alabama (nth), Georgia (19th), and 
Louisiana (26th), and on February i by Texas. The Con- 
federate government was organized in February at Mont- 
gomery, Alabama, with Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, as 
its head. Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ten- 
nessee joined .the Confederacy after the breaking out of the 
Civil War, and the southern capital was established at 
Richmond, Virginia. The border slave States of Delaware, 
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained loyal to the 
Union throughout the war. 

Preceding the beginning of hostilities it was the earnest 
desire of the northern political leaders, without distinction 
of party, to avert, if possible, the threatened conflict At 
first there was a very general disinclination to form pre- 
sumptions unfavorable to an ultimate accommodation, and 
it was even hoped that Union counsels might yet prevail in 
the southern States with the exception of South Carolina. 
President Buchanan was desirous of giving no provocation. 
His circumspect course during the months of November and 



THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 75 

December, particularly in reserving decision as to rein- 
forcement of the forts in Charleston harbor, has been the 
subject of much criticism. No doubt can be entertained of 
his preference for leaving to his successor, so soon to be 
inaugurated, the responsibility of a positive policy. He be- 
lieved it was not incumbent on his expiring administration 
to take measures likely to either initiate war or accelerate 
secession. Assuming the probability of ultimate disunion 
and war, he was persuaded that the most important service 
he could render the national cause would be that of adding 
nothing to the incitements to separatism during the critical 
time of the labors of the secessionist leaders to consolidate 
southern support for their schemes and secure the more 
doubtful States for their Confederacy. It was well known, 
and was a fact that stimulated ardent hope at the north, 
that the States of Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North 
Carolina, absolutely indispensable to a powerful Confeder- 
acy, were in the balance on account of the Union sentiment 
with which they were permeated. Would it not, therefore, 
be the course of wisdom to not only stay the hand of the 
P*ederal government but abstain from any proceedings 
calculated to exacerbate southern feeling?. Moreover, Con- 
gress was to be considered, and it was unquestionable that 
Congress, responsive to the general desire of the northern 
people, would make strong efforts toward conciliation. 
These were some of the considerations that influenced Bu- 
chanan in the first few weeks after the election. As against 
the rigid view that the authority and prestige of the govern- 
ment ought to be maintained at all hazards, they were of 
course at best only specious; but few thinking people would 
have approved rigorous measures in conformity to that ex- 
clusive view, except on the question of the forts, in the ter- 
rible crisis that was upon the country. 

In his annual message to Congress (December 4) Bu- 
chanan denied unqualifiedly the right of secession. On the 
subject of the forts he asserted the unquestioned authority 
of the United States, adding that the officer in command, 
Major Anderson, had received orders to act strictly on the 



76 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

I 

defensive, and that in case of attack " the responsibiHty for 
consequences would rightfully rest upon the assailants." 
The ultimate course and spirit of the administration were 
wholly in accord with northern sentiment. At the end of 
December three commissioners from South Carolina arrived 
in Washington to *' treat " for relinquishment to their com- 
monwealth of the '' real estate " within its bounds which 
was occupied by the national government. The President 
refused to give them any official recognition. The real aims 
of the commissioners were, First, to procure practical ad- 
mission by the Democratic Executive of the right of South 
Carolina (and therefore any other State) to peaceably secede 
with all its territory including harbors and islands ; and 
Second, to accomplish the greatly desired result of peace- 
able expulsion of the United States military forces from 
Charleston harbor. Realization of these aims would have 
established the whole claim of legal secession and relieved 
the south of the necessity of military aggression. But Bu- 
chanan was firm in his Union principles and attitude. Upon 
the points of the impossibility of lawful dismemberment of 
the Union and the sole responsibility of the south for aggres- 
sion, he never yielded to the slightest degree. 

One of his most notable acts was his reconstruction of the 
cabinet. The names of his principal advisers — eminent 
Union Democrats — during the last two months of his Presi- 
dency are among the most illustrious in the history of the 
struggle against the Confederacy. Jeremiah S. Black, of 
Pennsylvania, was Secretary of State ; John A. Dix, of New 
York, Secretary of the Treasury; Edwin, M. Stanton, of 
Pennsylvania, Attorney-General ; and Joseph Holt, of Ken- 
tucky, Secretary of War. 

Black was the dominating personality and the President's 
mainstay. Inflexible on the principle of resolute mainte- 
nance of the Union's integrity and pursuance of the govern- 
ment's duty, he was the embodiment of the administration's 
final policy— a policy which not only was irreproachable 
from every point of view, but was continued without essen- 
tial change by Lincoln so long as peace with the south 
remained possible. 



THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 77 

Stanton was afterward the celebrated War Secretary of 
the Lincoln administration. 

Dix it was — acting in performance of his official duty 
under Buchanan — who wrote and sent the immortal dis- 
patch to New Orleans : '* If any one attempts to haul down 
the American flag, shoot him on the spot." 

Early in January the administration undertook to rein- 
force Major Anderson at Fort Sumter. The President was 
in favor of dispatching a powerful naval vessel, but was dis- 
suaded by General Scott, commander of the army, and a 
merchant steamer, the " Star of the West," was sent instead. 
It did not reach its destination, being fired on by the shore 
batteries and forced to put back to sea. Although Major 
Anderson at the fort was a spectator of the affair, he kept 
his guns silent. The sentiment of the country approved his 
forbearance, and there was no general demand either for 
practical notice by the government of the South Carolina 
flourish of war or for repetition of the hazardous experiment 
in Charleston harbor pending Republican assumption of 
national control. 

We have endeavored to write an unprejudiced account of 
the course of the Executive in the crucial period from the 
election until Lincoln's inauguration. This is due an ad- 
ministration so extraordinarily beset with difficulties. The 
facts are little understood generally. In broad respects 
they have been much misrepresented for partisan objects. 
Buchanan was not a great President. He made marked 
mistakes, which operated for the grievous injury of the 
Democratic party. But he was a devoted Union man, and 
he transmitted the government to his successor without 
blemish upon its honor or prejudice to its interest in prin- 
ciple, and moreover without any occasion existing to either 
reverse its position or undo its transactions. 

It was from the country at large and Congress that all 
the noteworthy offers of compromise proceeded. 

A national Peace convention was held, under the chair- 
manship of former President John Tyler, which adopted a 
series of recommendations. More important than the 



78 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

measures of that unofficial body were several undertakings 
and propositions directly on behalf of the controlling influ- 
ences of political power at the north. 

First, there was the Thurlow Weed Compromise, which 
proposed to extend the Missouri line to the Pacific, all terri- 
tory south of the line to be open to slavery. The same ar- 
rangement was made the leading feature of the Crittenden 
Compromise, a Senate non-partisan measure that received 
strong support but failed to pass. The fact of its introduc- 
tion and serious consideration after the plan that it repre- 
sented had for twelve years been supposed dead, is a re- 
markable evidence of the anxiety for reconcilement. 

By general Republican agreement, especially as expressed 
by a House committee headed by Thomas Corwin and by a 
caucus of Republican Governors held in New York, a move- 
ment was started and successfully prosecuted to repeal the 
State Personal Liberty laws which had been enacted in the 
interest of fugitive slaves. Thus the local measures of the 
north directed against the slave institution were sacrificed 
in order to propitiate the seceders. 

The following proposed constitutional amendment was 
passed by two-thirds in each house : " No amendment 
shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or 
give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within 
any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including 
that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said 
State." In other words, the right of undisturbed existence 
for slavery at the south was perpetually guaranteed. For 
this measure the Republicans were responsible, as at the 
time of its adoption they were in undisputed control of both 
the Senate and House owing to the resignations of south- 
ern members. A southern commentator^ wrote : ** This 
proposition, if carried out by the States, will remove the 
only real ground of apprehension in the slave States. It 
blows the Irrepressible Conflict doctrine moon-high, and 
received the sanction of the author of that doctrine him- 



1 Thomas A. R. Nelson, at that time a member of Congress from Tennessee. 



THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 79 

self." Lincoln gave his approval to the principle of the 
amendment in his first inaugural. 

In addition, the right of slavery to enter New Mexico 
Territory was substantially conceded by the Republican 
Congress, and the new Territories of Colorado, Nevada, 
and Dakota were organized without slavery interdiction — a 
cardinal principle of the Republican party being waived in 
all these cases. 

The striking measures to which we have referred were 
of course without fundamental party significance except as 
they illustrated, to the honor of all concerned, the suspen- 
sion of party and sectional spirit in the great national emer- 
gency. None of them in any manner represented Repub- 
lican policy as such, or could have engaged the smallest 
Republican support before the election. 

The Republicans simply came, at a late day, to the iden- 
tical position in relation to inexorable facts in which the 
Democratic party had long stood on account of conditions 
and circumstances and their logical requirements that, as 
the result now proved, it had correctly estimated from the 
viewpoint of the Union's preservation. 

Lincoln, assuming the Presidency on the 4th of March, 
1861, announced in his inaugural address his adherence to 
the principle of an indivisible and indestructible Union and 
asserted the belief of the north in the moral wrong of 
slavery, but declared his purpose of impartially enforcing 
the laws inclusive of the Fugitive Slave law, his resolve to 
in no way interfere with slavery in the States, and his de- 
termination that there should be '' no invasion, no using of 
force against or among the people anywhere " beyond what 
should be " necessary to hold, occupy, and possess the 
property and places belonging to the government, and to 
collect the duties and imposts." In no respect of immediate 
treatment did his policy for the situation diverge from that 
of his predecessor. But there was the necessary difference 
that it was for Lincoln, and Lincoln alone, to speak the 
words of final decision for the government and point out 
to the seceders what they had to expect. His allusion to 



8o THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

conditional force was construed at the south to imply even- 
tual war; and at the north, notwithstanding all his gener- 
ous moderation, none could doubt that he would pursue an 
active course against attack. Douglas, the great leader of 
the northern Democracy, occupied a conspicuous place at 
the inaugural ceremony. By all his declarations and acts 
until his untimely death (June 3, 1861) he thoroughly and 
ardently sustained the national administration. 

When the crash came (April 12) it was the result of Lin- 
coln's firm continuation, despite Confederate threats, of the 
occupation of Fort Sumter and his decision accordingly 
(which he caused to be communicated to the South Caro- 
lina Confederate Governor) to provision, though not mili- 
tarily reinforce, its garrison. This time the fire was on the 
fort itself, an aggression against which both the retiring and 
incoming Presidents had given solemn warning. No longer 
was the issue of war to be compromised, and a united north 
rallied to the flag of the country for the mighty conflict. 

The connection of the Democratic party with the ques- 
tion of slavery and the beginnings of the Civil War has for 
more than half a century been a favorite theme with its 
foes. Innumerable have been the prejudiced versions, con- 
demnatory judgments, and rancorous denunciations. We 
have treated the subject with some particularity. The his- 
tory is very extensive and intricate, and owing to the 
limitation of space for this little book many details have 
been omitted ; but it is believed the essential elements have 
been set forth with precision and reasonable proportion. 

No Democrat need be ashamed of the record. 

In its relations to the waging of the war, to the associ- 
ated questions, and to the political settlements that fol- 
lowed, the Democratic party was animated by singleness of 
devotion to the cause of restoring the Union and — which it 
deemed to be an intimately related matter — the interest of 
ultimately reestablishing, so far as possible, fraternity be- 
tween the north and south. At the outset there v/as no real 
issue between the Republicans and Democrats. Even party 



THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 8i 

names were in a number of States discontinued, the new 
Union party being created and receiving cordial support 
from the followers of both old organizations. It was greatly 
due to the unselfish and fervidly patriotic spirit of the War 
Democrats that the splendid State administrations which 
contributed so much to vigorous prosecution of the struggle 
were elected and popularly sustained, and that the local 
disaffections springing up were repressed by the over- 
powering weight of public sentiment. At no time did any 
northern State waver in loyalty. In view of the extreme 
differences on principle concerning the sectional dispute 
that had previously obtained, the history of the conduct of 
the war presents no more notable aspect than that of the 
government's freedom from complicating difficulties within 
its own territory. 

It is an indisputable fact that during the Civil War al- 
most half the voters of the States remaining in the Union 
were strong, indeed uncompromising, supporters of the 
Democratic party on principle. Anyone taking the trouble 
to analyze the election returns for the four-years period will 
find this conclusion inescapable. At the Presidential elec- 
tion of 1864, when the general political conditions were 
more than commonly unfavorable to the Democracy and 
presumably only the staunchest party men voted the ticket, 
the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 4 to 5. More- 
over, in 1864, not counting the votes of the four border 
States or of the newly admitted States of Kansas, West Vir- 
ginia, and Nevada, the Democratic Presidential ticket re- 
ceived 160,000 more votes than were cast in identical north- 
ern States for Douglas and Breckinridge combined in i860. 

Regarding the questions of national policy that grew out 
of the contest, the position of the party in general con- 
formed to the noted Crittenden resolution of July, 1861, 
adopted almost unanimously by both houses of Congress. 
This resolution declared that the war was not waged for 
conquest or subjugation, or to overthrow established insti- 
tutions of the southern States, but to maintain the su- 
premacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union. 



82 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

The more extreme war measures involving matters of 
gravely doubtful political necessity and wisdom, followed 
after the war by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments 
(providing for negro citizenship and suffrage), by the car- 
petbag governments, and by the long protracted military 
occupation of the south, were believed by the Democrats to 
be intolerant, oppressive, and in the interest essentially of 
partisan Republican control and its perpetuation by arbi- 
trary means. , 

Thus the comparative concord that marked the beginning 
of the war gave way to an ever-growing disagreement be- 
tween the parties. The great majority of the Democrats 
were not content to merge themselves into the Union party, 
and that organization was finally left to the Republicans, 
who in their national campaign of 1864 adopted its name 
in place of their own — a tactical proceeding to which they 
were influenced by the desire of retaining their large fol- 
lowing of War Democrats and also by recognition of the 
inveterate prejudice against the Republican name among 
the loyal men in the border States, as well as in the States 
of the Confederacy that were being recovered with the 
progress of military operations. A further evidence of the 
appreciation by the Republicans of the Democracy's great 
popular strength and their anxiety in politic ways to gain 
Democratic votes, was their selection in 1864 of Andrew 
Johnson, a lifelong Tennessee Democrat, as the running 
mate of Lincoln in his second Presidential candidacy. 
There was no Republican party reason save that of cam- 
paign expediency for the nomination of Johnson ; and if ever 
politicians merited embarrassing consequences from a 
course supposed originally to have been brightly conceived 
but presently found to have been a sad mistake, the Repub- 
licans fully deserved their unhappy experiences with John- 
son when he became President. 

It is of historical interest, illustrative of the great dis- 
turbances in political thought resulting from the Civil War, 
that at the opening of the campaign of 1864 a faction of 
Radical Republicans held a national convention which re- 



THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 83 

pudiated Lincoln and nominated John C. Fremont for the 
Presidency on a platform demanding " the confiscation of 
the lands of the rebels and their distribution among the sol- 
diers and actual settlers.'' General Fremont in his accept- 
ance referred to the work of Lincoln as *' politically, mili- 
tarily, and financially a failure." Later he withdrew in Lin- 
coln's favor. 

The Democratic national convention met in Chicago 
August 29, and nominated for President General George B. 
McClellan, of New Jersey, and for Vice-President George 
H. Pendleton, of Ohio. At that time the military situation 
did not promise a decision, and the Democrats were no 
more skilled than the discontented Radical Republicans in 
reading the future. As is customary in political platforms, 
the opposing party was arraigned with many specifications, 
one of which instanced the '* failure to restore the Union " 
after four years of war ; and resort to amicable measures for 
renewing '* the Federal union of the States " was advo- 
cated. Assertion was made of the party's *' unswerving 
fidelity to the Union under the Constitution " for '' the wel- 
fare and prosperity of all the States, both northern and 
southern." No objection was made in the platform to the 
proposed Thirteenth amendment (then before Congress), 
providing for the complete and permanent abolition of 
slavery throughout the United States. 

The Democratic party never stood for remorseless war 
against the south as a prime matter, or for vindictive and 
oppressive treatment of the south after the war. Neither, 
it should be remembered, did Lincoln. He had solemnly 
averred that his whole object was to save the Union. 
Originally he was willing to save the Union by the 
extreme means of retaining southern slavery if necessary. 
As late as February, 1865, he prepared a message to Con- 
gress proposing payment to the south of $400,000,000 as the 
price of peace^ — his reasons being that the north was equally 
blameworthy with the south for the curse of slavery origi- 
nally, that it was just to give an equivalent for manumis- 
sion, and that cessation of war without any compromise 



84 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

being made of principle or national interest was worth the 
money. The cabinet disapproved the message, and he re- 
luctantly withheld it. 

If the Democratic party was culpable (as so often has 
been vehemently alleged) for its peace desire in August, 
1864, i^ot less was Lincoln culpable in February, 1865. 
Both Lincoln and the Democratic party would have wel- 
comed peace with the south in brotherhood, but only on 
the basis of the Union's restoration. 

The Electoral College in 1864 was divided as follows: 
Lincoln, 212; McClellan, 21 (3 in Delaware, 11 in Ken- 
tucky, and 7 in New Jersey). The popular vote stood: Lin- 
coln, 2,216,067; McClellan, 1,808,725. Several of the im- 
portant States were close. The Republican majority in 
New York was 6,700; in Pennsylvania, 20,000; in Connecti- 
cut, 2,400. 

On April 15, 1865, Lincoln died by an assassin's bullet 
and Andrew Johnson became President, his term running to 
March 4, 1869. 

From Lincoln's death until the Civil War issues ceased to 
be effective in national politics, the anti-southern extremists 
held absolute rule in the Republican party. They not 
merely ruled, they were in truth the whole of the real 
Republican party, as since their time the special interests 
have been. 

When Lee surrendered his remnant of 27,000 soldiers at 
Appomattox Court House (April 9, 1865), not only was 
there no more fight left in the Confederacy, but there re- 
mained no remotest possibility that the southern people 
could again stand up in resistance to northern will. The 
north could do whatever it chose with the southern people 
everywhere, in every respect, and for all time. It chose to 
regard and treat the southern people, excepting those of the 
colored race, as enemies and as disqualified for free political 
action. 

Concerning the constitutional measures on behalf of the 
colored race — those of emancipation, citizenship, and suf- 
frage, — all intelligent people knew from the beginning that 



THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS OUTCOME 85 

the ultimate results and uses (in beneficial respects) to 
come from the south's necessary acceptance of the meas- 
ures, would depend in part upon the colored citizens them- 
selves and in part upon the ability of the southern whites 
to successfully deal, in time, with the new and strange con- 
ditions and problems. Upon all grounds and considerations 
of fact the southern whites were the chief factor, and would 
inevitably so continue. And there could be no desirable 
permanent solution except along the line of the south's local 
interest as understood and directed, for certainly a long 
time, by the whites of the south. 

But the Republican party had no friendly or tolerant 
spirit toward the southern whites, and never could acquire 
any. Because they had been ** rebels," it cared nothing for 
their economic recovery and felt no interest in their per- 
fectly peaceable and nobly energetic efforts to make the 
best of their difficult lot and rebuild their society in order, 
enlightenment, and industry. It dealt with them from the 
strict and sole point of view of successful Republican poli- 
tics, forcibly imposing upon them arbitrary, ignorant, and 
villainously corrupt governments, which it propped up with 
bayonets as long as it dared in face of the growing northern 
revulsion against its selfish and merciless partisan course. 

When finally the Federal troops were withdrawn from 
the southern States, in Hayes's administration, the Repub- 
lican party as a national organization fell into decay in 
every one of them. More than forty years have passed. 
Two new generations of intelligent and loyal voters have 
grown up. Two foreign wars have been fought, in which 
the southerners have patriotically participated. Ten Presi- 
dential elections have been held. Not one southern Elec- 
toral vote has been given the Republican party in all the 
two-score years. 

The southern race question has long been dropped from 
national politics. It is a local question for the people of the 
south, purely economic and social as related to their lives 
in association with one another. No end useful to the coun- 
try could possibly be served by national political interfer- 



86 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

ence. Agreeably to the south's convinced belief in the wis- 
dom and necessity of suffrage discrimination, State laws 
have been adopted imposing educational and other qualifica- 
tions. These. have been tested in the courts and upheld. 
From time to time, however, Republican complaints are 
heard, with suggestions as to whether the conditional pen- 
alty of the Fourteenth amendment does not apply. On that 
point an impartial writer has said: 

" Congress is not likely to take upon itself the enforce- 
ment of the penalty, for the ratification of those (Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth) amendments was procured only by 
counting the vote of States which acted under duress, and 
the requirement of such ratification as a prerequisite to re- 
admission is considered to have been of doubtful constitu- 
tionality. Moreover, serious doubt has been growing as to 
both the justice and the expediency of the suffrage condi- 
tions which the war forced upon the southern States. The 
foremost leaders among the negroes themselves have 
avowed their approval of both property and educational 
tests, if fairly administered, since each of them would serve 
as a spur to greater efforts on the part of the negroes in 
thrift and in education. "^ 



^ George W. Hayiies, " Cyclopedia of American Government," article on 
Suffrage. 



CHAPTER IX 

TRANSITION AND NEW QUESTIONS 
1865-1884 

THE twelve years covered by Johnson's administration 
and the two administrations of Grant are of party 
interest chiefly as constituting the period of transition 
from the old politics of passion and hate on the sectional 
subject to the modern politics concerned with economic 
questions, important reforms, and the general progressive 
tendencies and demands of the people. They were years 
of bitter contention and uncomprising hostility between 
the parties, and were marked by many dramatic events. 
To readers desiring a discriminative history of this famous 
period we recommend the very able book of William Archi- 
bald Dunning, '* Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 
1365-1877" ("The American Nation" series, vol. 22). A 
brief summary must here suffice. 

President Johnson, as an old-time Democrat and a south- 
ern man, was devoted to the doctrine of the sanctity of the 
constitutional guarantees of State rights and liberties, and 
was a passionate believer in reconciliation as the best na- 
tional policy. In the vacation of Congress at the opening 
of his administration he instituted an Executive program of 
reconstruction, mainly conforming to Lincoln's understood 
ideas, which contemplated the reestablishment of local gov- 
ernments by the people of the south subject to their abso- 
lute acceptance of the results of the war and their sub- 
mission to such Federal regulation and supervision as 
should be required. ' When Congress reassembled in De- 
cember, 1865, there was at once developed a fierce and re- 
lentless opposition to the President on the part of the radical 
Republicans. The result was their historic *' Congressional 
policy " for despotically dealing with the southern whites, 
which was made uniformly effective against the President's 
vetoes by their two-thirds control of both houses through- 
out his administration. 

The Democrats upheld Johnson on the matters agreeing 

87 



88 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

with their position in favor of national reunion in both 
spirit and fact governed by good faith on the part of the 
south as well as the north ; though they in no way approved 
those of his ideas which they regarded as more pro-southern 
than national and which, together with certain expressions 
in his public addresses, very much injured his cause. They 
prevented the dishonor to the nation of his impeachment. 
At their national convention of 1868 a resolution was 
adopted commending him for his patriotic efforts, and a 
considerable complimentary vote was given him for the 
Presidential nomination on the first ballot. But the con- 
vention did not regard him as a party leader and was not 
inclined to the defensive course that his candidacy would 
have necessitated. Horatio Seymour, of New York, was 
nominated for President, and Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Mis- 
souri, for Vice-President. 

General Ulysses S. Grant, of Illinois, and Schuyler 
Colfax, of Indiana, were nominated by the Republicans. 

At the election all the States voted except Mississippi, 
Texas, and Virginia, which had not as yet been recon- 
structed. In the other southern States, under the opera- 
tion of local laws disfranchising the ex-Confederates and 
granting suffrage to the freedmen, which had been enacted 
obediently to the Congressional reconstruction measures, 
the Republican ticket received the Electoral votes of 
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Caro- 
lina, and Tennessee. The only southern States carried by 
Seymour were Georgia and Louisiana. New York, New 
Jersey, Oregon, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky gave 
him their votes. Total Electoral vote — Grant, 214; Sey- 
mour, 80. Popular vote — Grant, 3,015,068; Seymour, 

2,709,633. 

With a President thoroughly devoted to their policy and 
maintaining it by all the agencies of the government, in- 
cluding the power of the army, the radical Republicans now 
became even more aggressive in prosecuting their southern 
schemes. The notorious Force bills of 1870-71, with other 
drastic measures of southern interference, were adopted. 



TRANSITION AND NEW QUESTIONS 89 

On account of President Grant's ill-chosen appointments 
and many evidences of his lack of adaptation to civil affairs, 
poor judgment, and proneness to be badly influenced, as 
well as his ready compliance with every demand of the 
extremists, his administration was early regarded with 
great dissatisfaction by many of the best men of the 
Republican party. The Liberal Republican movement was 
the outcome. It soon took on formidable proportions, but 
owing to the high favor in which the President stood with 
the all-powerful radicals there manifestly could be no hope 
of dislodging him in 1872 by the means of regular action 
within the party. The Liberal Republicans accordingly set 
up a separate organization, which held a national conven- 
tion in Cincinnati and nominated as its Presidential and 
Vice-Presidential candidates Horace Greeley, of New York, 
and B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri. The platform opposed 
'' any reopening of the questions settled by 'the Thirteenth, 
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments," and, consistently 
with the policy for regarding the sectional and race con- 
troversies as ended, demanded " the supremacy of the civil 
over the military authority," " State self-government," and 
'' for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the 
constitutional limitations of power." Resolutions were 
adopted strongly urging reform of the civil service and " a 
return to specie payments." 

The Liberal Republican nominees and platform were ac- 
cepted by the Democrats in their national convention held 
in Baltimore. At that time Democratic desires and efforts 
were concentrated upon securing the renewal of peaceful 
order, contentment, and self-government at the south, and 
the settlement of the race question by the processes of local 
arrangement immediately, since no other manner of settle- 
ment could possibly avail ultimately. It was therefore 
deemed both a patriotic and party duty to unite with the 
Liberal Republicans in the common cause. But the nomi- 
nation of Greeley was unfortunate on account of his un- 
acceptability to the Democratic party at large, and also 
because of the rooted disbeUef on the part of most people 



90 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

of normal ways of thinking in his capacity for either sound 
or discriminating official leadership. His selection once 
made by the Liberal Republicans, however, could not be 
repudiated by the Democrats without throwing away every 
chance of success for the policy of reconciliation. 

A dissatisfied element of the Democratic party, known as 
the '' Straight-outs,'' held a convention at Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, its nominees being Charles O'Conor, of New York, 
and John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts. This ticket 
received no support of any consequence, and polled only 
30,297 votes. 

President Grant was renominated by the Republicans, 
and for Vice-President their candidate was Henry Wilson, 
of Massachusetts. 

The election afforded striking proof of the uselessness, 
and indeed folly, of ill-assorted party coalitions and illogical 
nominations. Notwithstanding the eminent respectability 
and unquestioned earnestness of the Liberal Republicans, 
they were only an aggregation of dissidents perfunctorily 
organized and engaged in a merely temporary experiment. 
A very slender reed for the vigorous and unterrified 
Democracy to lean upon. As for the Democrats, they were 
quite without heart in the campaign, and by tens of thou- 
sands stayed at home on election day. Greeley did not 
carry a northern State and was successful only in the bor- 
der States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri and the 
southern States of Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. Grant 
had 3,597,070 popular votes, Greeley 2,839,079. Before the 
Electors met Greeley died. The result in the Electoral 
College for President was: Grant, 286; Thomas A. Hen- 
dricks, of Indiana, 42; B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, 18; 
Charles J. Jenkins, of Georgia, 2; David Davis, of Illinois, 
I ; not counted, 17. 

Following this luckless adventure the Liberal Republican 
movement came promptly to an end. The Democratic 
party returned to its unaided fight against the Grant ad- 
ministration as if nothing discouraging had happened. 
Victory was not long delayed. In 1874 the Congressional 



TRANSITION AND NEW QUESTIONS 91 

elections showed a Democratic majority of 74 in the next 
House of Representatives, although the then existing House 
(elected in 1872) had a radical Republican majority of 
nearly a hundred. Never had there been such an overturn. 
Besides, a notable gain was made by the Democrats of 
seats in the Senate. The immediate causes of the revolu- 
tion were the country's extreme weariness of the single 
" Bloody Shirt " issue of the Republicans, its disapproval of 
further continuance of Federal tyranny over the southern 
whites, and its attribution to the party in power of respon- 
sibility for the terrible financial panic of 1873 and the con- 
sequent '' hard times." It was moreover manifest that the 
laboring and agricultural m.asses— especially at the west, — 
who so long had been good-naturedly responsive to the 
strenuous appeals on behalf of the Republican party as 
possessed of superior elemental virtues and graces, were 
beginning to consider political questions from a new point 
of view, that of their own interests as regarded and treated 
by the two parties contrastingly. Such a disposition on the 
part of the laborers and farmers was excessively incon- 
venient for the Republican politicians, who, owing to the 
nature of the controlling influences in their organization, 
were in no position to satisfy the new expectations and 
much preferred the simpler politics of eternal hate of the 
south and traduction of the Democracy accordingly. 

The perennial troubles of the Republican party with the 
labor and agricultural votes — troubles which at the present 
day appear to be approaching their climax — date from the 
second administration of Grant. 

Although the Democratic House of Representatives 
(Forty-fourth Congress) was powerless to establish any- 
thing affirmative in the respect of national policy because of 
the disagreement of the Republican Senate and President, 
it did great and salutary work in another direction. For- 
ever memorable in the country's history are its investiga- 
tions and the disclosures that resulted. Corruption in the 
government, in the forms of prodigious and systematic 
frauds on the revenue with official connivance, valuable 



92 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

grants of favor to special interests and individuals in re- 
turn for political influence as well as for money equivalents 
and presents of stock in corporations, etc., was shown to be 
rampant and most astonishingly pervasive. Cabinet mem- 
bers, many subordinate officeholders, the President's pri- 
vate secretary, a former Vice-President, and the Speaker 
of the previous House were tainted by indubitable proofs. 
The country keenly felt the disgrace; and to the aroused 
public interest in the need of higher standards of govern- 
ment conduct and official responsibility are traceable, to no 
small degree, the inception and development of the reform 
movements of the past forty-five years. 

In the Presidential campaign of 1876 the Democratic 
leader was Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, his associate 
being Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. Their Republican 
opponents were Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, and William 
A. Wheeler, of New York. There was also a Greenback 
party ticket, headed by Peter Cooper, of New York, and 
(as had been the case in 1872) a ticket of the Prohibition 
party. 

The Democratic platform of 1876 (adopted at St. Louis), a 
model of masterly but concise presentation of issues, ranks 
with the most famous deliverances in the records of the 
party. Its keynote was reform. Among other matters, 
reform was demanded in the treatment of the southern 
States; in financial measures, on the basis of a true con- 
servatism and specifically for the interests of a sound cur- 
rency, restoration of the public credit, and maintenance of 
the national honor ; in the tariff, for correction of the abuses 
that had '* impoverished many industries to subsidize a 
few," and pursuant to the general principle of duties *' only 
for revenue " ; in the national expenditures, with a view to 
economy ; in the policy relating to the public lands, a policy 
that had '' squandered 200,000,000 acres upon railroads 
alone " ; and in the civil service, to the end of appointments 
" for approved competency " instead of as rewards for 
party zeal. 

The election resulted in 184 undisputed votes for Tilden 



TRANSITION AND NEW QUESTIONS 93 

— one short of a majority. These undisputed votes con- 
sisted of 70 from five northern States — Connecticut, Indi- 
ana, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia; 38 from 
the four border States (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and 
Missouri) ; and 76 from the eight southern States of Ala- 
bama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, 
Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The votes of Florida (4), 
Louisiana (8), and South Carolina (7) were technically dis- 
puted; but not in any just sense was Tilden's title to them 
disputable. 

In the three States in question there obtained, at the 
time of the election and after. Republican governments 
that owed their being to the power of the Federal adminis- 
tration and were sustained by Federal soldiers. Without 
such conditions it was impossible that any one of them 
could have gone for the Republican party; in the circum- 
stances of the race situation Republican success in Florida, 
Louisiana, or South Carolina would have been indeed as 
unimaginable as would be to-day the triumph of a Chinese 
or Japanese party in California save under the duress of 
irresistible external authority. This of course is not said by 
way of invidious allusion to any non-white race; it is merely 
a pertinent statement of incontrovertible American politi- 
cal fact. 

Not only were the Republicans incapable of carrying any 
one of the three States except by outside force, but with all 
their power as conquerors they actually failed in Louisiana 
and Florida, while in South Carolina their majority was 
very small and open to legal doubt. In Louisiana the elec- 
tion returns gave Tilden a majority of over 6,000; in Florida 
the result was close, with a majority of about 100 appearing 
for Tilden, which was disputed by the Republicans. By 
" returning board " manipulations and arbitrary decisions 
the Electoral votes of both States were certified to Congress 
as having been cast for Hayes. Counter certifications on 
behalf of the Tilden Electors were sent from Louisiana, 
Florida, and South Carolina, and a question was raised as 
to the legal qualification of a Hayes Elector in Oregon. 



94 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

The two houses of Congress, unable to agree in deciding the 
result of the election, committed the matter to an extra-con- 
stitutional tribunal called the Electoral Commission, con- 
sisting of five Senators, five Representatives, and five Jus- 
tices of the Supreme Court. That body, though created 
for a purely judicial purpose, divided uniformly on party 
lines, eight Republicans to seven Democrats, awarded every 
disputed vote to Hayes, and so determined his choice as 
President by 185 Electoral votes to 184 for Tilden. Despite 
the deep-seated feeling of wrong throughout the country 
the Democratic House consented to the final award for 
the sake of national peace and the supremacy of law. 

Tilden's popular vote was 4,284,757 ; Hayes's 4,033,950. 
The Greenback candidate had 81,740 votes, and the Pro- 
hibitionist 9,522. 

President Hayes early in his administration ordered the 
soldiers out of the south. Though entirely a party man, 
his attitude on public questions was in general more ac- 
ceptable to the Republican liberals than the old-fashioned 
radicals, and showed a becoming appreciation of the fact 
that the Republican party no longer stood in a position 
warranting arrogance. He was consequently regarded with 
much scorn by the lordly chiefs whose will had previously 
been supreme. Throughout his four years (1877-81) the 
House of Representatives remained Democratic, and in the 
Forty-sixth Congress (1879-81) the Senate also had a 
Democratic majority. No enactments on party lines were 
possible for either the Democrats or Republicans. The 
Bland-Allison Silver Purchase act, a non-partisan measure 
directing government purchase of silver for coinage pur- 
poses of not less than $2^000,000 or more than $4,000,000 
monthly, was passed, vetoed, repassed over the veto, and 
so became a law (1878). The southern question, automati- 
cally settled by the removal of the troops, stayed settled. 
After securing control of the Senate the Democrats passed 
legislation for repealing the measures of the Grant regime 
that provided for Federal control of elections, but the repeal 
was vetoed by the President in deference to the sensitive 



TRANSITION AND NEW QUESTIONS 95 

Republican feeling that there had been quite enough yield- 
ing to the whites of the south. The obnoxious measures 
were not removed from the statute-books until the Demo- 
crats obtained full power in the government under 
Cleveland. 

It was the desire of the Democratic party to again nomi- 
nate Mr. Tilden in 1880, but he declined to be a candidate. 
General Winfield S. Hancock, of Pennsylvania, was selected 
as the standard-bearer, the Vice-Presidential nomination 
going to William H. English, of Indiana. An eminently 
progressive platform was adopted, indicating the party's 
purpose to deal vigorously with new questions. The plank 
that attracted most attention was: ** Home Rule; honest 
money, consisting of gold and silver, and paper convertible 
into coin on demand; the strict maintenance of the public 
faith. State and national; and a tariff for revenue only." 
" Discrimination in favor of transportation lines, corpora- 
tions, or monopolies " was condemned, the interests of labor 
were sympathetically referred to, and declarations were 
made in favor of '' pjublic land for actual settlers " and 
against further Chinese immigration. Opposition to the 
inflow of Chinese laborers was at that time intense on the 
Pacific coast. 

The platform of the Republicans, though largely devoted 
to glorification of their party's past, showed that they also 
recognized the changing conditions of the times, and em- 
bodied promises of a new basis of action in certain matters 
as to which their former course had been very unpopular. 
One of these promises was that there should be " no 
further " grants of the public domain to any railway or 
other corporation. Their reluctance to abandon hostility 
to the southerners was evidenced by a pompous pronounce- 
ment against " the dangers of a Solid South." The south 
had indeed become solid in 1880, but no dangers from that 
result had developed — and, as all know, none have devel- 
oped in the forty years since, A cautious declaration was 
made on the Chinese subject. The Republican nominees 



96 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

were James A. Garfield, of Ohio, and Chester A. Arthur, 
of New York. 

The little parties of Greenbackism and Prohibition again 
took the field, James B. Weaver, of Iowa, being the candi- 
date of the former, and Neal Dow, of Maine, of the latter. 

Garfield was elected by the vote of New York, having in 
that State a plurality of about 21,000. Hancock carried 
New Jersey, West Virginia, Nevada, the four border States 
and eleven southern States, and had five of the six Electoral 
votes of California. The total Electoral vote was, Gar- 
field, 214; Hancock, 155. Popular vote — Garfield, 4,449,053; 
Hancock, 4,442,135; Weaver, 307,426; Dow, 12,576. 

The inauguration of Garfield (March 4, 1881) was fol- 
lowed at once by bitter quarrels in the Republican party 
consequent upon the Presidential appointments and related 
matters of patronage. He was shot by a crazed Republican 
factionist July 2, died September 19, and was succeeded by 
Vice-President Arthur. In spite of the hope that the new 
President would pursue a course with reference more to the 
general approbation of the country than to favor for 
any particular Republican element, the troubles were but 
little reduced except in superficial appearance; and the 
administration itself gave finally a signal demonstration of 
the prevalent spirit of willfulness by forcing the nomina- 
tion of Charles J. Folger for the Governorship of New York 
against strong public sentiment — the consequence being the 
election of Folger's Democratic opponent, Grover Cleve- 
land, by an unparalleled majority. There was a steady 
growth in support of the Democracy by the independents. 
Pennsylvania, which had become Republicanism's greatest 
stronghold, elected a Democratic Governor, Robert E. 
Pattison ; and that distinguished Democrat, George Hoadly, 
was chosen Governor in Ohio after an excitiiig contest with 
the aspiring Foraker. In the Senate the parties were tied 
during the first half of Arthur's administration, with one 
Independent holding the balance; during the second half 
there were 38 Republicans, 36 Democrats, and 2 " Read- 
justers." The House of Representatives, Republican by a 



TRANSITION AND NEW QUESTIONS 97 

small plurality in 1881-83, had a Democratic plurality of 
79 in 1883-85. 

It was in the Arthur administration that the tariff ques- 
tion came into prominence. From the operation of the 
protective system established during the Civil War and 
since continued by the Republicans without any attention 
to the needs for change in many details, serious evils had 
developed. These had been analyzed by the Democratic 
platform of 1876, which denounced the whole fabric of 
duties, levied upon four thousand articles, as constituting 
*' a masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense." 
In addition, a large and for many reasons undesirable sur- 
plus revenue was accumulating. Congress in 1882 provided 
for a TariflF commission empowered to investigate and make 
recommendations. In the early part of 1883 (the Repub- 
licans being then in control of the House) a tariff bill was 
passed and signed which was remarkable for its artful con- 
struction in favor of various interests but gave no satisfac- 
tion in principle to reform demands. Thus was begun the 
long tariff contest. 

The noted non-partisan Civil Service Reform bill was 
passed and became a law January 16, 1883. It will be re- 
membered that by platform declarations made in 1872 and 
1876 the Democratic party stood committed to the principle 
of reform in the civil service. Although without a majority 
in either house when the bill was brought up and acted on, 
and therefore not able to enjoy any part of the official credit 
for its enactment, Democrats in both Senate and House 
gave it substantial support. Probably its most active and 
effective promoter was George H. Pendleton, Democratic 
Senator from Ohio. 



CHAPTER X 

CLEVELAND AND AFTER 
1884-1912 

G ROVER CLEVELAND was nominated for President 
by the Democratic national convention of 1884, which 
Tnet in Chicago (July 8-1 1); and Thomas A. Hendricks, of 
Indiana, received the nomination for Vice-President. The 
presentation in the platform of the questions before the 
people was introduced by an admirable statement of the 
fundamental character and position of the party. No better 
statement has ever been written, or can be. As follows: 

'* The Democratic party of the Union recognizes that, as 
the nation grows older, new issues are born of time and 
progress, and old issues perish. But the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the Democracy, approved by the united voice of 
the people, remain, and will ever remain, as the best and 
only security for the continuance of free government. The 
preservation of personal rights ; the equality of all citizens 
before the law; the reserved rights of the States; and the 
supremacy of the Federal government within the limits of 
the Constitution will ever form the true basis of our liber- 
ties, and can never be surrendered without destroying that 
balance of rights and powers which enables a continent to 
be developed in peace, and social order to be maintained by 
means of local self-government." 

"" The Republican party was circumstantially arraigned for 
its characteristic and resolute spirit of backwardness as to 
matters of popular demand; its subjection to special inter- 
ests and degeneration into " an organization for enriching 
those who control its machinery " ; its consequent permis- 
sions of " frauds and jobbery " ; and its general preference 
for arbitrary government and unscrupulous political 
methods consistently with the nature of its representative 
direction and as the logical means for retaining its power. 
As the exordium of the platform was a perfect expression 
of the spirit of the Democracy, so was this summary of 
the nature and tendencies of the Republican party perfect. 

98 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER 99 

The Republican party had come to stand for special 
interests. 

Special interests it has stood for since primarily and 
sturdily. 

In this work, on account of the limited space prescribed 
by the publishers and our plan of exclusive consideration of 
outstanding aspects, it is of course an impossibility to with 
any formality analyze platforms, political campaigns, or 
Presidential administrations, except (as in the cases of the 
slavery and Civil War questions) where a somewhat atten- 
tive examination of details is fundamental to our historical 
purpose — that is, to a presentation of the Democratic 
party's record in at least the elements of its integrity. No 
distinction will be made in relation to the Cleveland or sub- 
sequent campaigns and administrations, all of which, from 
the general simplicity of their party history and the famili- 
arity of the public with the essential phases, may be con 
cisely treated. 

The Republican opponents of Cleveland and Hendricks 
were James G. Blaine, of Maine, and John A. Logan, of 
Illinois. Blaine's nomination was distasteful to the reform 
elements of the Republican party and the large class of 
independent voters. Such eminent Republicans as Carl 
Schurz, George William Curtis, and Henry Ward Beeche'r 
came out for Cleveland, and he had the powerful support 
of the New York Times and other conspicuous newspapers 
that previously had upheld the Republican cause. On the 
other hand, Mr. Blaine was regarded as representing in a 
most decided manner the old-time men of his party and 
their undisguised intention to hold to changeless ideas ; and 
in the respect of partisan leadership the Republicans never 
have had a stronger candidate. Enthusiasm on his behalf 
took some extravagant forms. An incident was the cere- 
monious call on him, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New 
York City, by five hundred Protestant clergymen to coun- 
teract the prejudiced feeling in certain quarters occasioned 
by Irish Catholic activities in his interest. The spokesman 
of the deputation, Rev. Dr. Samuel D. Burchard, in his 



loo THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

fervid address alluded to the Democracy as the party of 
*' Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,'' and Mr. Blaine omitted 
to take exception to the plain insult to the Catholics. The 
indiscretion of Burchard was doubtless one of the causes 
of Republican loss of New York and the election. A much 
more important cause was the candidacy on the Prohibition 
ticket of John P. St. John, formerly Republican Governor 
of Kansas, to whom many thousands of Republicans dis- 
pleased with Blaine but unwilling to vote the Democratic 
ticket gave their support. It was in the 1884 campaign that 
the notable Prohibition party newspaper, the Voice, was 
launched. While uncompromisingly opposed to both old 
parties, it made special appeal to the Republicans on ac- 
count of the general indications of their growing dissatis- 
faction with the unchangeable position of their party on 
public questions. 

Cleveland's Electoral vote was 219, Blaine's 182; and 
of the popular votes Cleveland had 4,912,696, Blaine 4,849,- 
680, St. John 151,830, and Benjamin F. Butler (Anti-Mo- 
nopoly), 133,824. Cleveland carried New York, Connecti- 
cut, New Jersey, Indiana, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, 
Missouri, and West Virginia, in addition to every State 
of the South. In New York his plurality was 1,047. 
• During his first four years as President (1885-89) Cleve- 
land had the cooperation of a Democratic House of Repre- 
sentatives, but the Senate was Republican. His adminis- 
tration was distinguished for vigorous and bold leadership, 
intellectual force, the loftiest standards of public duty, 
fearlessness in dealing with all questions and conditions, 
and reforms and efficiency in the public service. When he 
left office he fully retained the confidence and affection 
of the Democratic party, as well as the independents. 

The tariff issue on its ultimate lines was directly made by 
President Cleveland. It is true the Democracy was his- 
torically associated with the policy of tariff for revenue 
only, a policy affirmed by the platforms of 1876 and 1880; 
but the platform of 1884, upon which he was elected, did 
not pledge a specific course. It declared, however, that all 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER loi 

unnecessary taxation was unjust taxation, and demanded 
that taxation should be *' exclusively for public purposes " 
and should not exceed *' the needs of the government, 
economically administered." Cleveland looked with great 
disfavor upon the system that was responsible for the ever 
increasing surplus, and it was on account of the fiscal 
problems presented by the surplus, as well as the favorit- 
isms and wrongs fostered by the duties, that he urged Con- 
gress to undertake reforms and finally sent his famous 
tariff message of December, 1887, advocating thorough re- 
construction for the objects of putting a stop to public 
plunder and remedying financial disorders. The Demo- 
cratic Mills bill of reductions was passed by the House 
(July, 1888) and the tariff was made the dominating issue 
in the Presidential campaign then opening. 

One of the great results of the first Cleveland administra- 
tion was the creation (1887) of the Interstate Commerce 
commission with important powers over the railways, 
especially for preventing discriminations and requiring uni- 
formity in rates. Another valuable measure was the 
Presidential Succession- law, which embodied provisions 
for preventing future dangerous disputes. The work 
of reforming the civil service on the basis of the 
merit system, and so enabling public employees to be in- 
dependent of party politicians and no longer under the 
necessity of contributing to campaign funds, was under- 
taken in good faith and showed gratifying progress. 

The Democratic national convention of 1888 (St. Louis, 
June 5-7) renominated President Cleveland unanimously 
and named Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, for Vice-President. 
Their Republican opponents were Benjamin Harrison, of 
Indiana, and Levi P. Morton, of New York. Cleveland's 
attitude on the tariff, which was strongly endorsed by the 
Democratic convention, and the convincing proofs gener- 
ally that the Democracy was altogether committed to popu- 
lar ideas in resistance to political control by the " interests," 
caused a decided manifestation in Harrison's favor by those 



102 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

powerful influences of concentrated wealth actuated by 
determination to own the government and use it for the 
suppression of all liberal tendencies, that to the present day 
have been the main reliance of the Republican party — or 
rather, as already remarked, have constituted the whole of 
the real Republican party. Previously to the campaign of 
1888 the ancient southern issue had been the main basis 
of Republican appeal, but the devotion of the Republicans 
to the special interests had long been well understood, and 
particularly, as we have seen, in the contest of 1884. Not 
until after the tariff message of 1887, however, did the auto- 
cratic powers of special interest assume active charge of the 
operations. 

By the lavish and corrupt use of money collected from 
the beneficiaries of protection, their congeners, and their 
admiring friends among the great public — those ever eager 
to follow the lead of powerful wealth as quite the correct 
and " refined '' thing to do, and moreover the most conven- 
ient as disposing of the trouble df independent thinking, — 
the doubtful States were carried for Harrison. This was 
the campaign of the " Blocks of five " in Indiana. It was 
the first of the Republican *' Fat-frying " and '' Soap " cam- 
paigns. In New York there were local complications on 
the liquor question, which were turned to Harrison's ad- 
vantage by the means of sacrificing the Republican State 
ticket; but his plurality was only 13,000. 

The Electoral vote stood: Harrison, 233; Cleveland, 168. 
Popular vote — Cleveland, 5,540,050 ; Harrison, 5,444,337 ; 
Clinton B. Fisk (Prohibition), 250,125; Alson J. Streeter 
(Union Labor), 146,897. Scattering votes were cast for 
smaller parties. The northern States that went for Cleve- 
land were Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, 
Missouri, New Jersey, and West Virginia. 

Under Harrison, with both houses Republican from 1889 
to 1 89 1, policies were pursued which gave great offense 
to the country. As has always since been the case when 
the controlling directors of the genuine Republican party 
have come to power, temporary election success was inter- 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER 103 

preted to mean license to '' go the limit." Civil service 
reform was treated with contempt and the former practices 
were revived; a new despotic Force act, intended to stir 
up race troubles, passed the House to the accompaniment of 
violent expressions of detestation of the southern whites; 
Territories with ridiculously insufficient population were 
admitted as States (hence the name '* mining-camp 
States"), so as to increase the Republican power in the 
Senate, House, and Electoral College, and also to 
strengthen the silver forces in Congress ; Speaker Reed es- 
tablished in the House his oppressive rules against the 
minority; there were vast wasteful expenditures, so that 
for the first time the country had a billion dollar Congress ; 
and the high protective McKinley Tariff law was put into 
effect (October, 1890). In consequence the Democrats 
secured an immense majority in the House at the Con- 
gressional elections of 1890, and further Republican parti- 
san legislation was made impossible for the rest of Har- 
rison's term. 

The radical silver movement meantime gained marked 
development. In this period the doctrine of silver was 
decidedly under Republican jpatronage. The President and 
the Republican leaders in Congress feared the silver vote — 
but at the same time wished to escape responsibility. That 
was impossible because of the strength and insistence of 
the silver people; and the Sherman law, ordering the pur- 
chase of 54,000,000 ounces of the metal annually and the 
issue of treasury notes against the bullion, was passed by a 
Republican Senate and House and signed by the President 
(July, 1890). 

In 1892 Cleveland was for the third time nominated by 
the Democracy, the national convention assembling in 
Chicago on June 20; Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, was 
nominated for Vice-President. The Republicans were 
again led by Harrison, and their Vice-Presidential candi- 
date was Whitelaw Reid, of New York. 

The campaign was fought on the tariff question, with 
special reference to the McKinley law, which had now made 



104 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

its effects felt. Mr. Cleveland's ultimate object had been 
greatly misrepresented by the Republicans, and they had 
persistently accused him and the Democratic party of free 
trade designs. In his letter of acceptance, while opposing 
the theory that revenue laws should be passed for the 
purpose of granting discriminating governmental aid to 
private ventures, he added: ''We believe that the advan- 
tages of freer raw materials should be accorded to our 
manufacturers, and we contemplate a fair and careful dis- 
tribution of necessary tariff burdens rather than the pre- 
cipitation of free trade." During the canvass occurred the 
memorable Homestead strike, occasioned by the Carnegie 
Company's reduction of wages and refusal to recognize 
organized labor. The steel industry had been most care- 
fully nurtured by the tariff ; and its inability — or unwilling- 
ness — to maintain wages satisfactory to its employees and 
to live in peace with them was widely regarded as an object 
lesson of the purely one-sided operation of the protective 
system in its final reduction — that is to say, as applied to 
the laborer at the discretion of its enriched corporate bene- 
ficiaries. The self-evident fact that the pampered interests 
would necessarily take care of themselves first, and prob- 
ably exclusively, was brought home to the people. 

Cleveland swept the country. Harrison was the worst 
beaten candidate since Greeley. In the north, Cleveland 
received all the Electoral votes of Connecticut, Delaware, 
Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New 
Jersey, New York, West Virginia, and Wisconsin ; and also 
8 of the 9 votes of California, 5 of the 14 of Michigan, i of 
the 3 of North Dakota, and i of the 23 of Ohio — total for 
Cleveland, 277; for Harrison, 145; for James B. Weaver 
(Populist), 22. Popular vote — Cleveland, 5,554,414; Har- 
rison, 5,190,802; Weaver, 1,027,329; John Bidwell (Prohibi- 
tion), 271,028; Simon Wing (Socialist-Labor), 21,164. 

A significant feature was the formidable strength of the 
Populist party, an organization holding radical views and 
especially favoring the free and unlimited coinage of silver, 
a graduated income tax, and government ownership of 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER 105 

monopolies. Its principal following was in the agricultural 
States of the west and south. Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and 
Nevada were carried by its candidate, who also was voted 
for by one Elector in North Dakota and one in Oregon. 

The election of 1892 gave the Democrats complete con- 
trol of the government for the first time since 1856. Their 
majority in the Senate of the incoming Fifty-third Congress 
(1893-95) was, however, very slight — only three over the 
combined vote of the Republicans and Populists. Two 
questions, silver and tariff, engrossed attention; and the 
action upon each can be correctly understood and appraised 
only by due appreciation of the interaction of the forces in a 
political situation so exceedingly close mathematically and 
so very tense on account of positively opposed views and 
aims, which, however, peculiarly lent themselves to ac- 
commodations between the elements, as invariably happens 
when one proposition can be played off against another. 

President Cleveland, on economic grounds, was unalter- 
ably opposed, and always had been, to the silver movement. 
He uncompromisingly and determinedly took up the issue 
as made by the Republican administration of Harrison, and 
urged the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase law, call- 
ing Congress to meet in special session in August, 1893. 
After a most bitter fight the repeal bill was passed by both 
houses, with an amendment to the effect that the govern- 
ment would endeavor to secure bimetallism by means of 
international agreement. A financial convulsion, superin- 
duced by the problems and uncertainties, had seized the 
country soon after his inauguration; this has been mali- 
ciously called the " Cleveland panic " ; it was really one of 
the inheritances from the preceding regime. 

The tariff question came up in the regular session, which 
opened in December, 1893. It was complicated in Congress 
by the animosities engendered in the silver contest, the re- 
lated matters as between members primarily concerned 
about silver and those primarily concerned about tariff, the 
activities of the " interests " and the reaction to Republican- 
ism at some State elections in the fall of 1893, and the 



io6 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

absence of unity, or rather the growing tendency toward 
cleavage, in the Democratic party. The resulting measure — 
called the Wilson bill for its author, William L. Wilson, of 
West Virginia, chairman of the Ways and Means com- 
mittee of the House — was greatly changed in the Senate 
and loaded with a rider providing for an income tax. 
Cleveland declined to approve it, but permitted it to become 
a law without his signature. The Supreme Court, after a 
hesitant course, pronounced the income tax unconstitu- 
tional. 

In December, 1895, the country was thrilled by the Presi- 
dent's action in vigorously asserting the accountability to 
the United States of the British government for violation 
of the Monroe doctrine in Venezuela. The matter related 
to territorial aggression in the interest of the British colony 
of Guiana, and all diplomatic efforts for settlement, particu- 
larly on the basis of arbitration, had failed. Accordingly 
the President notified Congress that the government's 
policy was to appoint a United States commission with 
power to fix the boundary, and to hold itself in readiness 
to accept the consequences if the result should prove un- 
acceptable to Great Britain. '* I am firm in my conviction," 
he said in his special message, " that while it is a grievous 
thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking 
people of the world as being otherwise than friendly com- 
petitors in the onward march of civilization, and strenuous 
and worthy rivals in all the arts of peace, there is no 
calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that 
which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice 
and the consequent loss of national self-respect and 
honor, beneath which are shielded a people's safety and. 
greatness." The nation acclaimed the President's stand, 
and would have supported him to any extremity. Ulti- 
mately Great Britain acceded to arbitration, and the diffi- 
culty was amicably adjusted. The precedent established 
proved of the greatest pertinence and importance in stimu- 
lating the world movement, which before long began to 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER 107 

develop, for maintaining peace by international arbitration 
and cooperatioit. 

The silver forces were in control of the Democratic na- 
tional convention of 1896 (Chicago, July 7-1 1), which nomi- 
nated William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, for President, and 
Arthur Sewall, of Maine, for Vice-President, and declared 
for '' the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold 
at the present legal ratio of 16 to i without waiting for aid 
and consent of any other nations." Bryan was endorsed 
by the Populists, who, however, named for Vice-President 
a candidate of their own, Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia. 
A National Silver party convention endorsed both Bryan 
and Sewall. The gold Democrats, taking the name of the 
National Democratic party, met at Indianapolis and nomi- 
mated John M. Palmer, of Illinois, and Simon B. Buckner, 
of Kentucky. 

William McKinley, of Ohio, and Garrett A. Hobart, of 
New Jersey, were the Republican nominees. A silver fac- 
tion in the Republican national convention, headed by Sen- 
ator Henry M. Teller, of Colorado, bolted on account of the 
party's attitude for a single gold standard. 

Upon the issue of the campaign McKinley was not a 
little embarrassed by his record in Congress. He had voted 
for the Bland-Allison bill in 1878, and also had advocated 
the Sherman bill of 1890 on the ground that it was the next- 
best thing to free coinage. " We cannot," he said, " have 
free coinage now, except in the manner as provided in the 
bill. To defeat this bill means to defeat all silver legislation 
and to leave us with two millions a month only, when by 
passing this bill we would have four and a half millions a 
month of treasury notes as good as gold." The political 
situation, however, had radically changed, and McKinley 
was a faithful representative of his party. 

Bryan received 176 Electoral and 6,467,946 popular votes, 
being successful in the eleven southern States and in Color- 
ado, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, 
South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, and hav- 
ing one Elector in California and one in Kentucky. He 



io8 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

carried twenty-two States; Mr. McKinley carried twenty- 
three, counting California and Kentucky. McKinley's Elec- 
toral vote was 271, and popular vote 7,035,638. Popular 
votes cast for other candidates were: Palmer (Gold Demo- 
crat), 131,529; Levering (Prohibition), 141,676; Matchett 
(Socialist-Labor), 36,454; Bentley (Nationalist), 13,968. 

At the next four Presidential elections (1900, 1904, and 
1908) the Democratic and Republican candidates, and the 
Electoral and popular votes, were as follows : 

1900 

Democratic — Convention met in Kansas City, July 4-6. 
President, William J. Bryan; Vice-President, Adlai E. 
Stevenson. Both candidates were endorsed by the Popu- 
lists and the Silver Republicans. 

Republican — President, William McKinley ; Vice-Presi- 
dent, Theodore Roosevelt, of New York. 

Electoral vote — McKinley, 292; Bryan, 155 (Colorado, 
Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada, in addi- 
tion to the south). 

Popular vote — McKinley, 7,219,530; Bryan, 6,358,071; 
Woolley (Prohibition), 209,166; Debs (Socialist), 94,768; 
Barker (non-fusion Populist^, 50,232; and scattering. 

1904 

Democratic — Convention met in St. Louis, July 6-9. 
President, Alton B. Parker, of New York; Vice-President, 
Henry G. Davis, of West Virginia. 

Republican — President, Theodore Roosevelt; Vice-Presi- 
dent, Charles W. Fairbanks, of Indiana. . 

Electoral vote — Roosevelt, 336; Parker, 140 (the south, 
with Kentucky and 7 of the 8 in Maryland). 

Popular vote — Roosevelt, 7,628,834; Parker, 5,048,491; 
Debs (Socialist), 402,406; Swallow (Prohibition), 259,257; 
Watson (Populist), 114,753; Corrigan (Socialist-Labor), 

33,724- 

1908 

Democratic — Convention met in Denver, July 7-10. 

President, William J. Bryan; Vice-President, John W. 

Kern, of Indiana. 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER 109 

Republican — President, William H. Taft, of Ohio; Vice- 
President, James S. Sherman, of New York. 

Electoral vote — Taft, 321; Bryan, 162 (the south, with 
Colorado, Kentucky, 6 of the 8 in Maryland, Nebraska. Ne- 
vada, and Oklahoma). 

Popular vote — Taft, 7,679,006; Bryan, 6,409,106; Debs 
(Socialist), 420,820; Chafin (Prohibition), 252,683; Hisgen 
(Independent), 83,562; Watson (Populist), 28,831; Gil- 
haus (Socialist-Labor), 13,825. 

Mr. Bryan's leadership of the Democracy, commencing 
with the Presidential campaign of 1896, identified the party 
with advanced political ideas and convictions that had come 
to be strongly held at the west but were not acceptable to 
the leading influences in the great eastern centers of popu- 
lation. These ideas and convictions were representative of 
the sympathies and aspirations of people who were not con- 
cerned about maintaining the fixed course and circumscribed 
arrangements of things political agreeably to old patterns, 
but who favored a decided amplitude with vigorous action 
accordingly. The great eloquence, tireless energy, ability, 
integrity, and sincerity of Mr. Bryan secured and held for 
him a most devoted following. His second nomination, in 
1900, was unanimous; and it was a significant evidence of 
the progressive spirit of his cause that among the conven- 
tion delegates on that occasion were women. In 1904 he 
was not a candidate for the nomination, but retained his 
eminence as a party champion. His third nomination, by 
the convention of 1908, was made on the first ballot, 892^^ 
of the 1,008 votes being for him. He has uniformly 
been an uncompromising and fearless advocate of prin- 
ciples, to the practical end of government by party— by the 
Democratic party, as the one popular agency possessed of 
the necessary strength and endurance in the incessant 
struggle against privileged interest. No act of his career 
has been more characteristic than his recent declination 
(July, 1920) of a nomination offered him by a one-issue 
third party, because of his belief in effective as distin- 
guished from experimental politics, his lifelong attachment 



no THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

to the Democratic party, and his gratitude for the honors 
bestowed upon him in that association. 

The silver attitude taken by the Democratic party in 1896 
was reaffirmed in 1900. Financial questions in American 
politics have occasionally involved exciting popular agita- 
tions, which have operated sometimes against the Demo- 
crats, sometimes against the Republicans. In 1874 the gen- 
eral dissatisfaction with financial conditions was one of the 
chief reasons for the crushing Republican defeat at the Con- 
gressional elections; in 1896 and after the Democrats suf- 
fered from the unsuccessful silver movement. On the other 
hand, no great and responsible party has ever permitted 
itself to prosecute a merely schismatic course in relation to 
the delicate subject of the country's finances — a subject 
which indeed should never divide parties for any longer 
time than is absolutely necessary to reach a conclusive 
settlement. The issue most vital to the Whigs was at one 
period that of their dear United States Bank ; but when the 
final decision was registered they patriotically ended the 
discussion. At the election of 1900 the silver question was 
settled unfavorably to Mr. Bryan's views, and the Demo- 
cratic party at its next convention accepted the result in 
concord with its Presidential nominee. Judge Parker, who 
said : " I regard the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably 
established." It belongs to the nature of a powerful party, 
measuring up to its responsibilities and emulating the great- 
ness and generosity of the country, to accept results. Only 
a little egotistical party will persist in mere contention. 

While on this topic it would be ungracious not to observe 
that the Republican party likewise has done itself honor 
by accepting results. It accepted the result about govern- 
ment at the south — very reluctantly, it is true, yet with 
completeness. Even on the financial question (which it 
has always regarded as its specialty), it has lately accepted 
a result— that of the Democracy's splendid reconstruction 
of the nation's banking and money system under the Fed- 
eral Reserve law of the first Wilson administration, a meas- 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER iii 

ure enacted after dismal Republican failure to accomplish 
urgently needed reforms. 

Finally concerning finances, let it be remarked that there 
was an indubitable Republican panic in 1907 to offset the 
alleged Democratic panic in 1893. 

The elimination of the silver issue from politics after the 
year 1900 in no way affected the Democratic party's ad- 
vanced position (except to accentuate it by simplification) 
in relation to new questions concerning labor; the treat- 
ment of favored business aggregations in respect of their 
pretensions and operations; economic and social matters 
touching the lives of the people; humane legislation; and 
participation of the citizens more directly in party affairs 
and governmental action. 

Following the famous times of the Republican return in 
1897, the enactment of the Dingley tariff, and the joyous 
pursuit of " simple politics " (so simple as to be practically 
automatic) under the domination of those mighty bosses, 
Marcus A. Hanna, Thomas C. Piatt, Matthew S. Quay, and 
Joseph G. Cannon, there came into the Republican party 
and the government a new master and a new order. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, constitutional successor of the murdered 
McKinley (1901), and afterward President by his ^' own 
right" (1905), embarked upon an aggressive leadership, 
with the result that all direction and power were soon 
concentrated in his person. As long as he continued 
in office the Republican organization fully retained 
its compactness and discipline, for there was no dis- 
puting authority with him, and as an exceedingly wise and 
discriminating politician he ruled without repelling the old 
bosses, who indeed discovered no reason for dissatisfaction 
in such respects of detail as most substantially interested 
themselves. On immediate administrative matters and the 
large concerns of policy, however, they were not consulted, 
but only told, — -to the great and always increasing enter- 
tainment and approbation of the country. Forward look- 
ing, his sympathies with the public at large, intimately 
understanding that the great and haughty " interests " had 



112 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

had enough and more than enough at the hands of the gov- 
ernment and the Republican party, and well recognizing the 
onward sweep of progressive sentiment in harmony with 
the spirit and demands of the Democracy, President Roose- 
velt initiated a course of decided action against the corpora- 
tions that were violating the laws, and by that daring de- 
parture from his party's treasured traditions, as well as by 
many utterances of pith and proceedings of moment in the 
direction of liberalizing its character and deeds, gained en- 
thusiastic popular support. The defeat in 1904 of the 
Democracy's splendid candidate, Judge Parker, was the 
natural result of Roosevelt's established position of leader- 
ship along the changed lines of Republicanism that he had 
marked out and that he expected the Republican party to 
follow; and the same may be said of the defeat of Bryan 
in 1908 by Taft, who was Roosevelt's chosen heir. Both 
the 1904 and 1908 results were tributes to Roosevelt per- 
sonally — nothing else. 

" The great fact of the Taft administration," says an 
able historian,^ " was the failure of the President, of the 
Republican majority in Congress, and of the Republican 
parly at lerre to rise to the situation by giving the country 
the progressive legislation which it demanded. . . . The 
people could not make up their minds to like a rubber-tired 
administration." It will live in history as the Stand-pat 
administration. From an early day of its succession to the 
strenuous Roosevelt regime, the forces of autocracy and 
privilege saw and embraced their opportunity to resume 
power; and since that day not once has their strangle hold 
upon the Republican party been relaxed. The enactment 
of the Payne-Aldrich higher tariff law (1909); the failure 
to give the country any financial reform measure; the arro- 
gant attitude and transactions of the Cannon oligarchy in 
the House ; the feebleness of the government's acts in mat- 
ters under the Anti-Trust law and the final abandonment 
of prosecutions; the reactionary course as to conservation; 

1 Frederic Austin Ogg, "National Progress, 1907-1917"; vol. 27 of '* The 
American Nation " series. 



CLEVELAND AND AFTER 113 

and the conspicuous evidences of Stand-pat contempt and 
loathing for all progressivism, caused the great " Insur- 
gent '' action by liberal Republican members in Congress 
and culminated in the catastrophic defeat of the party at 
the country-wide elections of 19 10, notwithstanding the 
efforts of Roosevelt himself to stem the Democratic tide in 
several States, notably (but successlessly) in Ohio as 
against Governor Judson Harmon. In the House of Repre- 
sentatives a Republican majority of 47 was changed to a 
Democratic majority of 67, and the Democrats made a gain 
of 10 votes in the Senate. 

And Woodrow Wilson and Thomas R. Marshall were 
elected by the Democracy as Governors in the States, re- 
spectively, of New Jersey and Indiana. 



CHAPTER XI 
WILSON 
1912-1920 

THE Presidential campaign of 1912 was ushered in by a 
fierce struggle for the Republican nomination be- 
tween President Taft and former President Roosevelt, 
which terminated in the success of Taft at the national con- 
vention held in Chicago (June 18-22), after the necessary 
resort to *' steam-roller " methods in awarding seats to 
contesting delegates in the latter's interest. Vice-President 
Sherman was renominated. In protest against the arbitrary 
doings most of the Roosevelt delegates withdrew from the 
convention upon its organization, and following its ad- 
journment they, with numerous sympathizers, held a meet- 
ing and launched the new Progressive party, which met in 
Chicago in national convention August 5-7 and nominated 
Roosevelt for President and Hiram Johnson, of California, 
for Vice-President. 

Woodrow Wilson received the Presidential nomination 
of the Democrats, forty-six ballots being taken by the con- 
'vention, which met in Baltimore June 25 to July 2. 



114 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Thomas R. Marshall was made the Vice-Presidential candi- 
date by acclamation after two ballots. 

From the time of the Republican split there was no doubt 
as to Democratic victory at the polls. Wilson, however, 
was not content to bide the assured result at leisure, but 
made an active speaking campaign, powerfully presenting 
the matters at issue. While treating specific questions, 
particularly those of tariff, business, human interests, etc., 
with frankness and lucidity, his addresses were of chief 
note for the promise of a purposeful program, indicating 
comprehensive aims. 

Wilson received 435 Electoral votes; Roosevelt, 88, con- 
sisting of the full votes of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsyl- 
vania, and South Dakota, and 11 of the 13 in California; 
Taft, 8, furnished by Utah and Vermont. The popular vote 
was, Wilson, 6,286,214; Roosevelt, 4,126,120; Taft, 3,483,- 
922; Debs (Socialist), 897,071; Chafin (Prohibition), 208,- 
928; Reimer (Socialist-Labor), 29,079. On account of the 
peculiar nature and circumstances of the contest, with 
Democratic triumph a foregone conclusion and an active 
yet only extemporized third party in the field, the popular 
figures were valueless for the purpose of basic party com- 
parison. Not so the results on members of the Ho_use and 
Senate. The new (Sixty-third) Congress was politically 
divided as follows: House — 291 Democrats, 127 Republi- 
cans, 9 Progressives, 7 Progressive-Republicans, and i 
Independent; Senate — 51 Democrats, 44 Republicans, and 
I Prohibitionist. It was manifest that the Roosevelt popu- 
lar vote was primarily personal, and that as a factor for 
the future the Progressive party was insignificant compared 
to the old Stand-pat organization. 

Corresponding to the national result was the general 
Democratic success on State tickets. Twenty-one of the 
thirty-five Governors elected were Democrats. One of 
these was James M. Cox in Ohio. 

The Democratic purpose of instituting and carrying out 
a comprehensive program, as declared by Mr. Wilson in 
the canvass, was undertaken without delay, prosecuted 



WILSON 115 

with system, diligence, and unprecedented party unity, and 
for both its magnitude and detailed benefits showed a won- 
derful record of achievement. There is in American history 
no other record of valuable party performance within a 
similar space of time that will bear comparison v/ith it. 
April 7, 1913, a special session of Congress convened pur- 
suant to the President's call, and began the great con- 
structive work by framing and enacting the Underwood 
Tariff law, a measure which fully met the Democratic 
promises to the people and was distinguished for economic 
soundness and great fairness. The first Income Tax law 
under the newly adopted Sixteenth amendment to the Con- 
stitution was passed ; and the great Federal Reserve system 
of banking and currency was formulated at the special 
session, established as law at the regular session, and put 
into operation on November 16, 1914. Next came the Fed- 
eral Trade Commission law, in the interest of fair methods 
in trade competition; and the Clayton Anti-Trust law, 
based on just restraints with real meaning and force back 
of them, as well as on vital principles affecting labor, and 
especially on the truth that the labor of a human being is 
not to be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of . 
commerce — or, as more pithily expressed by the Demo- 
cratic platform of 1920, ** Labor is not a commodity; it is 
human." 

Among the numerous other domestic measures of the 
government under President Wilson, primarily connected 
with the Democratic party program and therefore separated 
from the exigent conditions attending the war in Europe 
and our later participation in it, are to be mentioned new 
acts on rural credit, child labor, agricultural education, 
highway improvement, and seaman's protection, and re- 
visions of the statutes relating to public lands, conserva- 
tion, and reclamation. At an early period of Democratic 
control a farm loan system with land mortgage banks was 
created, and following that important work attention was 
given to other matters for the welfare of the agricultural 
interests, one of the conspicuous results being the Smith- 



ii6 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Lever Agricultural Extension act. With a view to re- 
moving the tariff question so far as possible from politics 
by committing its details to the dispassionate consideration 
and advice of experts, the non-partisan Tariff commission 
was established (1917). 

The country's endorsement was given the administration 
at the Congressional elections of 1914, 232 Democrats being 
returned to the House against 194 Republicans, 7 Progres- 
sives, I Independent, and i Socialist. Seats were gained 
by the Democrats in the Senate. 

Wilson and Marshall were renominated, both by accla- 
mation, by the Democratic national convention of 1916, 
held in St. Louis June 14-16. 

The Republicans (Chicago, June 7-10) chose as their 
candidates Charles E. Hughes, of New York, and Charles 
W. Fairbanks, of Indiana. Theodore Roosevelt was nomi- 
nated by the Progressives, who met in Chicago at the same 
time as the Republicans, and for the Vice-Presidency they 
named John M. Parker, of Louisiana. Mr. Roosevelt de- 
clined, advising his followers to support the Republican 
ticket. The Progressive national committee decided not to 
substitute any one in his place, whereupon the party, which 
had begun its career so ambitiously in 1912, came to an end. 

In the contest of 1916 many new and confusing elements 
and questions were involved. Sympathies and considera- 
tions for and against the administration were largely de- 
termined by varying individual views concerning its treat- 
ment of the problems of the World War. The subject, on 
account of the President's tremendous responsibilities, the 
gravity of the situation for the United States in every as- 
pect, and the solemnity of the question as to our future 
duty, had no relation to party; it belonged solely to the 
sphere of earnest and conscientious thought — except as 
prejudiced in certain quarters by the sinister influences of 
anti-Ally hate and conspiracy, with the substantial result 
of disloyalty in the circumstances, to which President Wil- 
son referred in his noble retort to O'Leary. There was 
much intemperate declamation by individuals, but both 



WILSON 117 

parties, to their honor, abstained from making any issue as 
against each other respecting the delicate matter that de- 
pended altogether on future events. Mr. Hughes, the Re- 
publican candidate, bore himself with eminent dignity and 
fairness, seeking no advantage, and thereby certainly lost 
no votes from intelligent and just people. 

Wilson had 277 Electoral votes, Hughes 254; the decid- 
ing State was California (with 13 Electors), in which the 
result was considered doubtful for two days, when Wilson 
was seen to have a plurality of about 4,000. Notwithstand- 
ing heavy Hughes pluralities in several of the great eastern 
States, Wilson's national plurality was more than 590,000. 
Thirty States went for Wilson (including eleven of the 
twelve where women were admitted to the suffrage), and 
eighteen decided for Hughes. 

Wilson States : — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, 
Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, 
Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Ne- 
braska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North 
Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, 
Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wyo- 
ming; in addition, i Elector in West Virginia. 

Hughes States : — Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, In- 
diana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, 
New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode 
Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia (7 Electors 
of the 8), and Wisconsin. 

Popular vote of the nation :— Wilson, 9,129,606; Hughes, 
8,538,221; Benson (Socialist), 585,113; Hanly (Prohibi- 
tion), 220,506; Progressive Electors, 41,894; Reimer (So- 
cialist-Labor), 13,403.1 

During the first twenty months of President Wilson's 
second term the country had no politics in the party sense. 
No issue, consideration, or calculation of party was con- 
cerned in any of the matters leading up to the declaration 

^ The figures of the 1916 election are from the "World Almanac." For all 
previous elections (including Congressional), our authority is the " Cyclopedia 
of American Government," articles on Presidential Elections and Congress of 
the United States. ■ 



ii8 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

of war on Germany (April 6, 191 7) or connected with the 
war's prosecution. 

There had been a carping spirit in relation to " insuffi- 
cient preparedness " — as if preparedness of the huge sort 
that would alone be of use were simply a matter of logical 
and automatic performance by the government during a 
state of peace and moreover without the indispensable 
authority of a policy actually anticipatory of war having 
been favored by the country, or by either of its responsible 
political parties, in the Presidential campaign or subse- 
quently pending the development of events. Anticipation 
of war in the manner of personal conviction of its coming 
was easy for all of us ; but to go to Congress and the people 
with a program of official war arrangement and the neces- 
sary colossal expense would have been a seriously different 
proposition under peace conditions and policy. 

But when the war came it was found that the administra- 
tion was ready with the most perfect plans, the most effec- 
tive measures, and the most extensive and powerful or- 
ganization. Moreover, the war, from the government's 
standpoint, was to be no little war, no mere comfortable 
war principally for the supply of the Allies and quite 
passive militarily on our part until the Germans should 
come over to invade us. It should be a war of absolute and 
entire national consecration, to which all our resources 
should be devoted not only, but all the mighty offensive 
power of our fighting men. In powerful and enthralling 
addresses Wilson pledged it, and every act of the govern- 
ment corresponded to his resolute spirit and immense 
energy. We did not wait to discuss conscription as Britain 
in deadly peril had done, but voted it at once, and as soon 
as the registry offices could be opened the system was put 
into operation. Wisely planned measures covering every 
possible phase of war and related activity were continually 
brought forward, adopted with the applause of the whole 
country, and administered (very often for pay of a dollar a 
year) by the ablest men and women. The people cooper- 
ated >with exalted emotion, abounding zeal, and noble sacri- 



WILSON 119 

fice. The boys thronged to the recruiting offices to have the 
honor of voluntary service. 

In mid-autumn of 1918 the war was won. It remained 
only for the Allies and the United States as their associate 
to make preliminary stipulations to the Germans and enact 
peace. The President had far-seeing views respecting the 
basis of peace, views that all the world knew. They cen- 
tered in the principle of a peace to end war. He fully 
understood that there would be fundamental conflicts of 
interest and opinion at the peace conference, and that pub- 
lic questions of the greatest importance would arise in the 
United States. In his work as the nation's leader it would 
be of the first consequence to have the agency of a party 
majority in the House and Senate, an agency without which, 
under our system of government, there never can be as- 
surance of the successful functioning of administrative 
policy; and he therefore requested the people to choose a 
Democratic Congress at the elections in November. This 
was refused, and both houses passed out of Democratic 
control. The subsequent results have well justified his 
appeal. 

The vote of 1918 was not on any defined question of 
the policies and measures to follow the war. There ob- 
tained at that time no war or peace question dividing the 
parties. It remained for the Republican party to make one. 
The country is hence officially still at war, and on this de- 
fined matter a vote is to be taken in the coming November. 
The elements are very simple. They consist of the opposed 
propositions, on the one hand, of completion of peace in 
conjunction with our Allies, and entrance into the League 
of Nations ; and on the other, flat repudiation of the negoti- 
ated peace and of its accompanying covenant on the be- 
half of humanity and for the rightful claims and interests 
of all nations. There is no other element; for equivoca- 
tions, hate, humbug, scare stuff, and bombast do not con- 
stitute one before an intelligent people. 

National conventions and nominations of the parties for 
1920: — 



120 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Democratic— Convention held in San Francisco, June 28 
to July 6. President, James M. Cox, of Ohio, nominated on 
the forty-fourth ballot ; Vice-President, Franklin D. Roose- 
velt, of New York, nominated unanimously without ballot. 

Republican— Convention held in Chicago, June 8 to 12. 
President, Warren G. Harding, of Ohio, nominated on the 
tenth ballot; Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge, of Massa- 
chusetts, nominated on the first ballot. 

For the present campaign and for the nation's future 
there is no political aspect of more interest or consequence 
than that of the enfranchisement of women, completed na- 
tionally by the action of the Legislature of the Democratic 
State of Tennessee, August 18, 1920, in ratifying the Nine- 
teenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

The certainty of early complete triumph for Woman Suf- 
frage dates from the New York State election of 1917, at 
which the vote on the Suffrage amendment to the State 
Constitution was: yes, 674,006; no, 585,016; majority yes, 
88,990. But the amendment would have failed if its fate 
had been left to the " up-State " counties of inveterate Re- 
publicanism. The great majority of 95,258 in the rock- 
ribbed Democratic City of New York carried it, every 
borough of the city voting favorably. After the New York 
result nobody of the least political acumen doubted the suc- 
cess of the movement nationally within a very brief period. 
It is of pertinence that in this year 1920 the women of New 
York, though possessed of equal suffrage and supposed 
equal title to consideration, have found causes for very 
serious dissatisfaction with the spirit and acts of the Re- 
publican leaders, organization, and Legislature in the State. 

As every reader who has given attention to current hap- 
penings knows, the women's demand for the " thirty-sixth 
State " was ignored in Republican Delaware, Vermont, 
and Connecticut, and, though treated with reflective and 
admonitory observations by the national standard-bearer 
of the party, failed to receive his active cooperation as to 
those non-ratifying States. 



WILSON 121 

On the Democratic side, one of the outstanding facts of 
the campaign is the whole-hearted reception of the women 
on terms of perfect political equality. In the national 
convention of the party at San Francisco the women dele- 
gates and alternates were very numerous, and every sug- 
gestion made by the women as to platform declarations was 
acted on to their satisfaction. The national committee was 
organized on the basis of an equal representation of women 
in its membership. Both President Wilson and the Demo- 
cratic Presidential candidate. Governor Cox, gave unquali- 
fied support to the efforts to secure the final State for ratifi- 
cation of the Woman Suffrage Amendment. 

When the suffrage provision on behalf of the colored race 
was added to the Federal Constitution (1870), the move- 
ment for Woman Suffrage had long been in progress, and 
appeals were made for extending the vote to women as 
Y^ell as to the freedmen. No action was taken ; and al- 
though the Republicans at many times subsequently had 
full power, both nationally and in the States, to grant the 
requests of the women, it was not until after the great 
development of progressiveness among the people, spring- 
ing from the advanced demands of the Democracy on pub- 
lic questions, that the women's cause began to show real 
progress. 

The Republicans base very much of their expectation of 
woman's support upon their ingenuous belief in their own 
"superiority," especially in the class respect — a belief that 
recalls the old pretensions of the '' important " Federalists. 
No " superior " pretension is made by the Democratic party. 
It is content to leave its cause to the independent scrutiny 
and consideration of women, as of all citizens, upon the 
merits of its record of one hundred and thirty years of 
identification with the ordinary interests of the people, in- 
timate sympathy with them in their aspirations, and con- 
scientious consistent performance accordingly. 

In relation to the course of women as an equal element of 
the national electorate, one prediction may be made with 



122 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

absolute certainty. They will be for things affirmative and 
for results that will last. 

The Republican party of standpatism and special interest 
is wholly negative in its attitude and proposals, and the 
things that it seeks are the things that do not last. It recog- 
nizes no change from the " good old days of Mark Hanna," 
when the great power that the party held was assumed to 
be for the primary object of negativing every progressive 
demand. It forgets the revolt of its liberal constituency 
against its narrow leaders, and remembers only that the 
absolute authority of those leaders as to real Republican 
policy has never been successfully disputed. 

No affirmative proposition of importance touching na- 
tional questions or interests has been put forward by the 
Republicans in the present campaign. All is negative, like 
the record of the Republican Congress. Regarding the Ver- 
sailles treaty and covenant, the Republicans do not and can- 
not show any other than a merely negative policy inspired 
partly by venomous hate of the President and partly by 
their preference to specialize on the subjects of existing war 
and future peace in their own particular manner — a man- 
ner as yet, on account of their " plural leadership," not 
defined. Regarding the great popular measures of the Wil- 
son administrations, the public demands for continued pro- 
gressiveness, and the claims of labor, their spirit is that of 
the pessimist resolved to see no good, but instead of posi- 
tive ideas they discreetly propound only negations. 

The future of the country is with the progressives of both 
parties. In the Republican party progressive sentiment is 
sincere and strong, but is in subjection to the forces of 
privilege. In the Democratic party it controls wholly, with 
a noble record of achievement under Wilson and the cer- 
tainty of continued accomplishment under Cox. 



LITERATURE RECOMMENDED FOR READING 

AND REFERENCE 

Acceptance Addresses of James M. Cox and Franklin D. 
Roosevelt. 

Democratic Campaign Text-Book. And other literature^ 
of the Democratic National Committee. 

Current History. Published monthly by the New York 
Times. Consult for important matters of reference con- 
cerning the late war, the Peace treaty, and politics. An 
indispensable authority. 

Standard Historical y Biographical, and Cyclopedic Book^ 

The American Nation : A History, from Original Sources 
by Associated Scholars; 28 vols., brought down to 1917. 
Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart. 

History of the United States from the Compromise of 
1850 to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South 
in 1877; with addendum to 1896. By James Ford Rhodes. 

A History of the American People. By Woodrow Wilson. 

Congressional Government. By Woodrow Wilson. 

The American Commonwealth. By James Bryce. 

Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the 
United States, 1776 to 1861 ; also Select Statutes and Other 
Documents, 1861 to 1898. By William MacDonald. 

The Democratic Party. By Edward M. Shepard. Mono- 
graph published by Appleton, 1892 (Evolution Series, No. 

31). 

American Statesmen. Standard biography, 34 vols. 
Edited by J. T. Morse, Jr. 

Biographies of the Presidents in Appleton's Cyclopedia 
of American Biography. Edited by James Grant Wilson 
and John Fiske. 

Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Government; 3 vols. 
By Andrew C. McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart. 
Contains important articles on all political topics, with pro- 
fuse references to standard authorities. 

The International Cyclopedia. 

The World Almanac. 

123 



ELECTORAL VOTE, 1920, AND ELECTORAL AND 
POPULAR VOTES, 1916 



Alabama 

Arizona 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut. . . . 

Delaware 

Florida 

Georgia 

Idaho 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts. . 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Montana 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 

New Jersey 

New Mexico. . . . 

New York 

North Carolina. 
North Dakota . . 

Ohio 

Oklahoma 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania . . . 
Rhode Island. . . 
South Carolina. 
South Dakota. . 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Utah 

Vermont 

Virginia 

Washington. . . . 
Vest Virginia . . . 

Wisconsin 

Wyoming 



Electoral 
Vote 
1920 



12 

3 

9 

13 

6 

7 

3 

6 

14 

4 

29 

15 

13 

10 

13 

10 

6 

8 

18 

15 

12 

10 

18 

4 

8 

3 

4 

14 

3 

45 

12 

5 

24 

10 

5 

38 

5 

9 

5 

12 

20 

4 

4 

12 

7 

8 

13 

3 



531 



PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1916 



Electoral Vote 



Wilson 



12 
3 
9 

13 
6 



6 

14 

4 



10 
13 
10 



10 
18 
4 
8 
3 
4 



12 
5 

24 
10 



12 
20 

4 

12 
7 
1 



277 



Hughes 



29 
15 
13 



18 
15 
12 



14 
45 



5 
38 

5 



7 
13 



254 



Popular Vote 



Wilson 



99,409 

33,170 

112,148 

466,200 

178,816 

99,786 

24,753 

55,984 

125,845 

70,054 

950,229 

334,063 

221,699 

314,588 

269,990 

79,875 

64,127 

138,359 

247,885 

285,151 

179,152 

80,422 

398,025 

101,063 

158,827 

17,776 

43,779 

211,645 

33,693 

759,426 

168,383 

55,206 

604,161 

148,113 

120,087 

521,784 

40,394 

61,846 

59,191 

153,282 

286,514 

84,025 

22,708 

102,824 

183,383 

140,403 

193,042 

28,316 



9,129,606 



Hughes 



22,809 

20,524 

47,148 

462,394 

102,308 

106,514 

26,011 

14,611 

11,225 

55,368 

1,152,549 

341,005 

280,449 

277,658 

241,854 

6,466 

69,506 

117,347 

268,784 

339,097 

179,544 

4,253 

369,339 

66,750 

117,257 

12,127 

43,723 

269,352 

31,163 

869,115 

120,988 

53,471 

514,753 

97,233 

126,813 

703,734 

44,858 

1,550 

64,217 

116,223 

64,999 

54,137 

40,250 

49,356 

167,244 

143,124 

221,323 

21,698 



8,538,221 



Wilson's plurality of popular vote, 591,385. 

Popular vote for Benson (Socialist), 585,113 

Progressive Electors, 41,894; Reimer (Socialist 

124 



Hanley (Prohibition), 220,506; 
Labor), 13,403. 



LBApV 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



027 272 417 9 



^'virtrKaiiiUfc V«^«»».' 



\iW>u<K»t>S^^TCr^ 



